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LIBRARY OF CaNGRESS. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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' Nor blame I Death, because he bare 
The use of virtue out of earth; 
I know transplanted human worth 

Will bloom to profit, otherwhere. 

For this alone on Death I wreak 

The wrath that garners in my heart; 
He put our lives so far apart 

We cannot hear each other speak," 

—Tennyson. 



JOHN HANCOCK, Ph. D. 



A MEMOIR, WITH 
SELECTIONS FROM 
HIS WRITINGS 



W? \\. VENABLE, LL. D 

author of 

" The Teacher's Dream," 

" Beginnings of Literary Culture in 

THE Ohio Valley," etc. 




CINCINNATI 

C. B. RUGGLES & CO. 

The New American Teachers' Agency 

Room C, 237 Vine Street 

1892 






Copyrighted 1892 

BY 
C. B. RUGGLES & Co. 



Press of McDonald & Eick. 



CONTENTS. 



LIFE- 

Childhood and Youth, .... 
The Awakening of Intellectual Desire, 
First Experiences in the Teacher's Vocation, 
Teacher and Principal in Cincinnati, . 
A Soldier in the Hundred Days' Service, 
Superintends a Business College, 
Employed by Wilson, Hinkle & Co., 
Superintendent of Cincinnati Schools, 
Joins Cincinnati Literary Club, 

Ten Years in Dayton, 

Superintendent in Chillicothe, 

State School Commissioner, 

Connection with the Ohio Teachers' Association 

The Ohio Teachers' Reading Circle, . 

Services in the National Association, 

Writings for Educational Journals, . 

Other Writings and Addresses, 

As an Institute Worker, 

Labors as Trustee of Ohio University, 

A Champion of Normal Schools, 

Other Offices and Dignities, . 

Death and Burial, .... 

Genealogy and Family Connections, 

Character and Life Services^ 



PAGE. 

6 
10 
11 
14 

, 20 

27 
, 30 

31 
. 87 

38 
. 43 

47 
, 52 

58 
. 60 

62 

69 

71 
, 73 

76 
. 77 

77 
, 82 

87 



CONTENTS. 



II. IN MEMORIAM- 

Personal Letters and Messages of Condolence, 
Action of the Ohio Teachers' Association, . 
Passages from Dr. Findley's Eulogy, 

Remarks of Dr. Ellis, 

Remarks of Dr. R. W. Stevenson, 

Remarks of Prof. M. R. Andrews, 

Remarks of Dr. J. J. Burns, . . . . 

Action of the National Council of Education, 

Remarks of Dr. E. E. White, . . . . 

Remarks of Dr. A. J. Rickoff, 

Remarks of Dr. W. T. Harris, 

Remarks of Dr. Robert Allyn, 

Remarks of Dr. B. A. Hinsdale, 

Remarks of Dr. Le Roy D. Brown, 

Remarks of Dr. Peabody, ... 



PAGE. 

103 
106 
107 
111 
113 
114 

, 115 
116 

. 116 
124 

. 124 
125 

. 126 
126 

. 127 



III. SELECTIONS- 

A Place of Solemn Delight, 

Not too Conservative, 

Ignorance is Power, 

One Secret of Success, . 

A Nation's Power Computed, 

Natural Ability versus Education, . 

Knowledge and Modesty, . 

Teach How to Talk, 

Great Thinkers Utter Themselves, 

Don't be too Serious, 

A Full Compensation, 

Fighting Talk, . . . 



129 
129 
129 
129 
130 
130 
130 
130 
130 
130 
130 
131 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE. 

The True Preacher Plain Spoken, . . . . 131 

The Teacher a Reformer, 131 

The True Teacher an Inspirer, 131 

Great Men the Product of Their Times, . . . .131 
The School System Based on Social Equality, . . 132 

The Lowly Laborer, 133 

Tribute to Some Lecturers, 133 

Ohio's Small Colleges, .134 

A Chance for all Children, 135 

Teachers Must Face Criticism, 136 

Education for Everybody, .137 

The Old-time Schoolmaster, 139 

The Spelling School, .145 

Manual Training, 148 

The Thinking Farmer, 149 

Mason Doan Parker, . . . . . . .151 

The Common Man, 156 

A Tribute to Patriots, . 182 



JOHN HANCOCK. 



CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. 

Not unlike Whittier's New England country lad, with 
** red lips " and " cheek of tan," must the Buckeye boy, 
John Hancock, have appeared, when, some sixty years 
ago, he began his education by taking object lessons of 
Nature in the free school of Out-doors. We picture him 
a sturdy urchin, wearing his ** torn brim " with ''jaunty 
grace," enjoying all the advantages which bare feet and 
**turned-up pantaloons" afford, in the pursuit of knowl- 
edge or pleasure, in wood and field or beside the alluring 
brook. The visible surroundings of the log-cabin home 
in which he spent his first years were varied, beautiful 
and inspiring ; and if physical environment has much to 
do in forming individual character, the Clermont hills 
and valleys are to be reckoned among the influential 
teachers of him whose career it is the purpose of this 
memoir to trace. 

John Hancock was born February i8, 1825, in 
a small farm house, a log-cabin, built by his father, 
situated on a high summit overlooking Point Pleasant, 
the home of General Grant, and commanding a noble 
view of the Ohio River and the Kentucky hills beyond. 
The village nearest to this rustic home was the quiet 
hamlet of Laurel. 



6 JOHN HANCOCK. 

David Hancock, the father of John, born in New 
Jersey in 1797, came with his parents to Clermont 
County, Ohio, early in the century, and ''grew up with 
the country." He was a man of force, rigid in morals, 
devout in religion, a Methodist, thoroughly versed in 
Scripture, a fluent and agreeable talker, and a person of 
considerable local influence. The ancient and honorable 
trade by which he earned his living was that of carpentry, 
a craft which he practiced with much industry and skill, 
building many houses and barns in his neighborhood. 
He married Thomas Anne Roberts, a woman of Welsh 
origin and good family, who is described as a " bright and 
attractive little lady." The issue of the union was a 
family of three sons and two daughters. The first-born 
of these was John, the subject of our sketch. The 
mother died at the age of thirty-five, leaving to the 
care of her bereaved husband the five young children. 

It happened very fortunately for the motherless lad 
that he attracted the attention and won the sympathy of 
a worthy couple, Mrs. Mary Moore and her husband Jeptha 
Moore, v/ho lived near Laurel, and who, being childless, 
besought David Hancock to allow them to adopt John as 
their own. Mrs. Moore, familiarly known in the neigh- 
borhood as " Aunt Mary," on account of her kindliness, 
seems to have been the prime mover in this solicitation, 
which resulted according to her desire and proved greatly 
to the advantage and happiness of all concerned. The 
semi-orphan boy found a new mother in * 'Aunt Mary," 
and continued to reside with the Moores during the years 
of his minority. 

The wide-ranging intelligence of Mrs. Moore, her 
positive principles, political and social, her enthusiasm, 
her genial humor, and her extraordinary energy, all 



CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. 7 

brought actively to bear on the training of the lad she 
had undertaken to "bring up," did much to determine 
his habits, studies and motives. She was a typical 
Quakeress. Mrs. Hancock writes that the '* good lady's 
dear old face, at the age of ninety years, would still 
ripple with smiles at the mirthful sallies of the boy, 
long grown a man, whom she had reared. She had a 
marked influence on his character, being strong intel- 
lectually, and kindly firm. The snug library she had 
collected, supplemented by his own limited buyings of 
books, was very helpful to him." Among the books 
on **Aunt Mary's" shelves were Gibbon's "Rome," 
Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," and Fox's "Book of 
Martyrs," and these the rigorous matron required her 
charge to read aloud to her of nights. It proved a long, 
hard pull to go through Gibbon; the "Pilgrim's Prog- 
ress" seemed, by contrast, in the nature of recreation; 
but the " Book of Martyrs " was pure pain, as the reader 
declared in after years : he was ashamed, when a boy, 
to confess to the serene Mrs. Moore how a lump came 
into his throat and a mist before his eyes whenever he 
opened the pages of Fox, and beheld the awful pictures. 
Dr. Hancock's obliging amiability was shown towards 
his benefactress by the habit he maintained of paying 
her occasional visits until the end of her long life, and of 
reading to her in compliance with her request or dictation. 
Only two weeks before the day of her death he called 
on her. She had been for some time confined to her bed, 
and unable to do her own reading, but she had preserved 
carefully on file the late numbers of the " National Era" 
and the "Anti-Slavery Standard," and availing herself 
of her opportunity, she solicited her obedient foster-son 
to read in regular order the newspaper report of the 



8 JOHN HANCOCK. 

leading political events that had transpired since her 
illness began. Of course her wish was gratified. 

The first teaching outside of the home circle that 
John Hancock received, was given in the Carmel school 
near Laurel, and the next in the Franklin district. The 
veteran educator of Clermont County, Prof. James K. 
Parker, familiarly but reverently known by his friends 
and former pupils as " Teacher Parker," furnishes some 
interesting reminiscences of the boy. He writes : **My 
first acquaintance with Dr. John Hancock was in the 
autumn of 1838, when I was teaching a country school 
in the Franklin district in Southern Clermont County, 
and he was enrolled as one of the pupils. His fondness 
for reading was early developed, In my school I kept a 
weekly record of the number of pages read by each 
pupil — aside from the regular studies — and reported to 
me every Monday morning. John's record was among 
the highest, if not the very highest. 

At that time the inhabitants of Franklin district were 
more noted than those of any other neighborhood in the 
county for intelligence and commendable aspirations. 

Prof. Joseph Herron, late of Cincinnati, was one of 
the earlier teachers in that district ; he left his wholesome 
impress upon the young people. 

Among Mr. Hancock's schoolmates in that fall term, 
at least three arose to some degree of eminence. Hon. 
John Ferguson became a very successful teacher, County 
Auditor and member of the Ohio Legislature ; P. J. 
Donham, Esq., was for many years a prominent member 
of the Hamilton County bar ; the late Judge T. Q. 
Ashburn arose through various grades of honor to a 
place in the Senate of Ohio. These four men were firm 
and lifelong friends. Mr. Donham is the only survivor. 



CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. 9 

They were all greatly aided in their aspirations by a 
circulating library, established by some of the older 
citizens of the district, which these young men read 
freely. 

Mr. Hancock had chosen the profession of law, and 
commenced his preparatory studies about the time the 
Clermont County Teachers' Institute was organized. He 
was invited to become a member of it, which he did, and 
soon became so enamored t)f teaching as to adopt it as 
his life work. 

After he had been a teacher m the Cincinnati public 
schools a few years, he again became my pupil in Cler- 
mont Academy to pursue, during his summer vacation, 
some of the higher branches of mathematics. He was 
always a diligent student, respectful, loyal and be- 
loved." 

Mr. Charles N. Browning, of Wilmington, Ohio, a 
schoolmate of Mr. Hancock, gives additional facts. He 
says : ** The writer remembers him from the day he first 
entered the district school at Franklin, noted in those 
days for the high standard which it occupied among the 
schools of the section. Among his schoolmates at that 
time were Rev. James H. Noble, who afterwards became 
and still is a prominent Methodist minister of Indiana and 
Illinois; the Donhams, the Shaws, the Fergusons, the 
Nichols, the Robbs, and many others who became promi- 
nent in agricultural, educational and political affairs in 
Southern Ohio. John was a bright and studious boy, 
and soon found his place at the head of his classes. It is 
too long a story to tell how the boy studied and worked, 
and how, even after he had become a teacher, he used 
to dismiss his summer school and come home to assist 
his foster parents and their neighbors in their harvesting. 



10 JOHN HANCOCK. 

He was a prime favorite with those with whom he 
mingled in those early days." 

Dr. Hancock himself gave, in one of his lectures, a 
very lively reminiscence of his early school days,. from 
which I quote a passage describing most felicitously 

THE AWAKENING OF INTELLECTUAL DESIRE. 

** Perhaps I may be pardoned if I illustrate, from my 
own observation, the power of advanced studies to wake 
up the mind. In my own early boyhood, I attended a 
country district school in Southwestern Ohio. The 
school had been served by many masters, the boundaries 
of whose mathematical knowledge extended not beyond 
the limits of Pike's Arithmetic, and whose very small 
stock of grammar was gathered in a painful way from 
the pages of Kirkham. Most of these teachers worked 
on the farm in the summer, and kept school in the 
winter. Of the quality of their farming I know nothing 
derogatory, but of their school-keeping, with an honorable 
exception or two, one would have to be very liberal indeed 
to say anything commendatory. Winter after winter we 
ground over our Kirkham ; and winter after winter we 
worked through Pike — ^for we never recited in arithmetic, 
the master * doing ' the sums for us when we were 
* stalled,' as we called it— that is, if he could. Into this 
weary, arid and stultifying routine broke a shy young 
man who had, by some chance, wandered away from 
Williams College, in old Massachusetts, to that secluded 
spot. This young man was an elegant scholar, a person 
of excellent judgment, and a born teacher. He breathed 
into us young skeletons the breath of life. The old 
Pikes, on his advice, were thrown aside, and algebra, a 



FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A TEACHER. n 

thing of which we had not even heard, was substituted. 
The study was a revelation to us, and under his quiet 
and skillful leadership became, as the boys said, more 
interesting than a novel. A young man residing outside 
the district, who, prompted by a divine hunger for 
knowledge, had spent some time in a distant academy, 
came into the school to read Latin. The Latin, to us, 
who, perforce, must listen to the recitation in it, was 
indeed a dead language, but the elegant English into 
which our master turned the great orator's periods, 
appealed to a slumbering sense of the beautiful, and we 
began to wish very earnestly that we might some day 
be able to read Cicero. The young man from Williams 
stayed with us but a single quarter, but the life he had 
breathed into us did not die^" 

FIRST EXPERIENCES IN THE TEACHER'S VOCATION. 

John Hancock began his experience as school-master 
in the old log school-house of the Franklin district, 
Monroe township, in the year 1843, when he was about 
eighteen years of age. He afterwards taught in other 
rural districts, and later in the villages of Amelia, 
Batavia and New Richmond, Clermont County. Con- 
stantly gaining in power and influence, he soon won his 
way to leadership among the teachers of his vicinity. 
When it was proposed to organize a teachers' association 
in Clermont County, being willing to work, and compe- 
tent to plan, he was pushed forward by the older teachers 
and shared with them the highest duties of local manage- 
ment. I am indebted to Mr. Browning for particulars 
concerning the Clermont Association, and the part taken 
in its founding by Mr. Hancock. Mr. Browning says, 



12 JOHN HANCOCK. 

referring to certain manuscripts in his possession : 
** Among them we fmd the minutes of a teachers' meeting 
held near Laurel, Clermont County, Ohio, January 29, 
1848. Charles Robb, a younger brother of the late Dr. 
Andrew Robb, was made chairman, and Mr. Hancock, 
secretary. Mr. Hancock read an essay * On the National 
Association for the Promotion of Education.' Mr. Han- 
cock was then but twenty-three years old, a mere boy as 
we think of him now, and yet at that early age was 
beginning to grapple with questions, the mastery of which 
in later years, made him the power in the educational world 
which he became. This gathering adjourned to meet at 
Franklin School-house on the last Saturday in April, 1848. 
Another paper of the collection is a copy of the * Preamble 
and Constitution of the Clermont County Association 
of Teachers,' This is in Mr. Hancock's handwriting and 
shows the neatness and care with which he was wont to 
do such things. This paper has no date, but evidently 
was written in 1848 or '49. Appended thereto we fmd 
the following names : E. T. Small, Wm. T. Parker, Wm. 
H. Heyford, Henry S. Kerr, Wm. Sargent, Wm. L. Rob- 
inson, John Dimmitt, Mark Stinchfield, C. C. Parker, 
Robert Shaw, Daniel L. Stinchfield, E. Sears, Wm. Young, 
John J. Hooker, F. L. Cleveland, Wm. B. Fisher, M. 
Jamieson, James K. Parker, Thomas W. Rathbone, L. 
Behymer, David Mulloy, John Ferguson, L. Jeffers, 
Joseph Shaw, Uriah Rice, Wm. L. Hamilton, Rev. A. J. 
McLaughlin, Dr. Hopkins, E. Ricker, and Jacob Clark." 
The Hon. E. C. Ellis, now of Crestvue, near Glendale, 
Ohio, and formerly prominent in educational affairs in 
Southern Ohio, sends the following informal and graphic 
account of his early acquaintance with Mr. Hancock: 
** About the time the Clermont County Institute was 



FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A TEACHER. 13 

organized I had been instrumental in organizing one in 
Brown County, and I visited the Clermont Institute on 
a ' still hunt ' for ideas. In those days, Institutes were 
conducted on the class system instead of the modern 
method of instructing by lectures. At that session, 
Hancock was the teacher of mental arithmetic, and his 
class was the first to recite after I entered the room. At 
that time but few teachers had been trained to oral solu- 
tions, as they were only beginning to introduce this subject 
into the school. 

Hancock had made good preparation and was master 
of the situation. I remember with what delight he would 
propound his * puzzlers' to the older teachers, most of 
whom were compelled to acknowledge their inability to 
* work the questions ' without using the pencil. If no one 
in the class could solve the example, or if the solution 
and every step was not logical, he would give the solution 
himself, and as I write I can see him, as I saw him then 
in his quiet way, leading the class, step by by step, from 
the premises to the conclusion. He was methodical in 
his work. Everything was systematized, and the solution 
must not deviate from the order he had marked out. The 
steps in his solution were as rigidly adhered to as if he 
were demonstrating a theorem in geometry. This charac- 
teristic, developed so early in life, it has always appeared 
to me, furnishes the key to his future success. 

During this class exercise our acquaintance, which 
ripened into a life-long friendship, began. You know, 
that in my younger days I had a penchant for mathe- 
matical studies, and it happened that I was familiar with 
the class of examples he was presenting. 

Being a stranger, I was not called upon to solve any of 
the examples, but * wise in my own conceit ' and anxious. 



14 JOHN HANCOCK. 

as young men usually are, to display my erudition (?), 
I volunteered a solution to a problem that was giving the 
class trouble. The teacher pronounced it correct, inquired 
my name, residence, etc., and placed my name in his 
class-book." 



TEACHER AND PRINCIPAL IN DISTRICT AND INTERMEDI- 
ATE SCHOOLS OF CINCINNATI. 

Generally there is found '* room at the top" for 
ambitious worth. Fortunately for Mr. Hancock, his 
ability was discovered by an appreciative educator of 
prominence, who had the inclination and the power to 
secure for him an advantageous position in one of the 
District Schools of Cincinnati. Doctor Joseph Ray, the 
mathematician, — whose distinguished services as profes- 
sor in Woodward High School began in 183 1 and continued 
to the date of his death, April, 1855 — became acquainted 
with Mr. Hancock in 1850, at a teachers' gathering in 
Clermont County, and was impressed so favorably by 
the young man's qualifications that he induced the author- 
ities to appoint Hancock first assistant in what was known 
as the Upper Race Street School, of which Mr. Andrew J. 
Rickoff was then principal. 

Thus, by Doctor Ray, were brought into collaboration 
two men whom common pursuits and mutual sympathies 
drew together into a close, warm and enduring friendship. 
*'Andy " Rickoff, as he was called familiarly by his friend 
**John," came to Cincinnati to teach, in August, 1847. 
His experience up to that time had been not unlike that 
of Mr. Hancock. The two were of nearly the same age, 
and both had proven successful in the management of 
several country and village schools. Mr. Rickoff began 



TEACHER AND PRINCIPAL IN CINCINNATI. 15 

his professional career in 1840. He was identified with 
educational affairs in Cincinnati, as principal of public 
and private schools, or as Superintendent of Schools, and 
President of the Board of Education, for a period of about 
eighteen years, or until 1867, when he removed to Cleve- 
land ; and during all that time, Hancock and he were very 
intimately associated, in private life and in public educa- 
tional concerns. Dr. Rickoff kindly contributes to this 
Memoir some personal reminiscences of his friend. He 
writes : 

"While Dr. Joseph Ray was delivering a course of 
lectures before the Teachers Institute of Clermont 
County, his attention was attracted by Mr. Hancock, 
then about twenty-five years of age. He marked him as 
a particularly able teacher, and on his return to the city 
the Doctor recommended him to me as one who would 
fill the vacant place of first assistant in the old Sixth 
District School, of which I was then Principal. Mr. 
Hancock was accordingly invited to take the place, and 
in only a few days he showed that the Doctor had not 
been mistaken in the man. This was at least forty years 
ago. From that time to the day of his death I regarded 
him as a very dear friend. There have been, indeed, 
few, if any, with whom I have ever been so intimately 
associated. 

Soon after Mr. Hancock became an assistant in the 
schools of Cincinnati, he, in company with Mr. O. J. 
Wilson, then Principal of the Twelfth District School, 
and afterwards for many years the head of the great 
Western firm of school book publishers, and two or three 
others, formed a literary club that met weekly in the 
Principal's room of the old Sixth District. At the meet- 
ings of this club, the time was passed in the reading of 



l6 JOHN HANCOCK. 

essays by the members, in the discussion of the authors 
of the day, and of the older worthies whose works are 
the favorite studies of all true students of English litera- 
ture, Mr. Hancock and Mr. Wilson were the principal 
contributors to the exercises of this club. 

The meetings of the club were discontinued on the 
retirement of two of its members from the public school 
service. It was not long, however, until we find Mr. 
Hancock engaging with peculiar zest in the work of 
another club, that held its meetings in my private school 
room. The lectures of Sir William Hamilton on Meta- 
physics and his Lectures on Logic, then just published in 
this country, received our principal attention for nearly a 
year. During our reading of these works, and for a long 
time afterward, we were favored by the presence and 
participation of Dr. Eli T. Tappan, who was facile 
princeps in these studies. It is worthy of note that Mr. 
Hancock succeeded his old friend as State School Com- 
missioner, and it is sad to think that both of them, within 
so short a time, should have been removed from their 
offices by the hand of death. The names of two more 
noble men never graced public records. They were the 
purest men whom I have ever known. They were 
ambitious only to do their whole duty. It is fortunate 
for the State when such men are called to fill its most 
important offices. Their mutual friendship was an honor 
to both of them. 

Mr. Hancock's readiness in debate, his thorough 
information on almost every subject pertaining to edu- 
cation, have been observed by all who have heard him in 
teachers* institutes. State and National conventions, in 
the meetings of the Superintendent's Department of 
Education, or in the National Council. Debate was not 



TEACHER AND PRINCIPAL IN CINCINNATI. 17 

likely to flag when he was present. Hence he was an 
invaluable participant in any meeting where questions of 
importance were to be discussed with a view of arousing 
public interest. His ability in this direction was, no 
doubt, owing in great degree to the faithfulness with 
which he kept up his reading on psychological subjects 
and the earnestness with which he entered into the 
exercises of the literary clubs of which he was a 
member. 

On my retirement from the principalship of the Sixth 
District School, Mr. Hancock was appointed. Soon after 
this, the present plan of organization was recommended 
and adopted by the Board of Education. The particular 
change which was destined to bring Mr. Hancock prom- 
inently before the public was the establishment of the 
Intermediate Schools whereby the higher classes of the 
Common District Schools were gathered together in four 
separate schools. The First Intermediate did not draw 
any pupils from Mr. Hancock's school, and hence he was 
not then promoted ; but only a year elapsed when it was 
found that the new school needed a man at the head of 
it of superior administrative ability, and Mr. Hancock 
was chosen to what was then and is still considered a 
difficult position. His selection was at once justified by 
the result. He soon carried the experiment to complete 
success. Opposition to the new system rapidly abated 
and soon died out. Owing to his executive tact, his 
industry, the straightforward, manly way in which he 
met the objections of the conservatives, it was not long 
before the school became very popular, and was followed 
by the establishment of two or three more schools of 
the same class." 

Mr. B. B, Stewart, now of New York City, gives a 



l8 JOHN HANCOCK. 

lively and forcible description of Dr. Hancock's character 
and methods as shown in the management of the First 
Intermediate School, in which school Mr. Stewart was a 
teacher for several years. He writes : 

*' Early in September of 1861 I began teaching in the 
First Intermediate School with Mr. H. for Principal. 
Then began a friendship that 1 have reason to believe 
was mutual. He was an earnest and devoted teacher. 
He taught more than was found in books. Among 
teachers and pupils he knew no favorites. He was 
exacting, but kind ; and honest effort in the performance 
of duty always won his sympathy and commendation. 
He was an example to those around him. He believed 
all he taught. He taught only the manly and the true, 
and his influence on pupils was always for good. He 
won and held the respect of the rudest boys. As a 
disciplinarian he was unsurpassed. The expression 
coming from a group of noisy boys, ' Oh, you can't fool 
Hancock,' meant a volume. The boys sat in judgment 
on the teacher — as boys will. Their rough expression 
was earnest and honest, the result of clear conviction, 
and carried with it the boys' belief in its converse. 

* Hancock won't fool the boys.' Fathers, Mothers, 
Teachers, has the experience of years brought this truth 
home to you ? ' You can't fool the boys.' When 

* the boys ' believe you will not try to fool them you 
have their full confidence and you have reached the basis 
on which Mr. Hancock rested all his efforts to do boys 
good, when they camie under his care. He never forgot 
that * Men are only boys grown tall.' He encouraged 
incipient manliness in a boy, believing that with man- 
hood's years he would be a * manly man.' I once asked 
a boy who had been a pupil under Mr. Hancock, how 



TEACHER AND PRINCIPAL IN- CINCINNATI. 19 

he liked the teacher in whose care he then was. He 
replied, *Oh, I don't like him as much as I do Hancock.' 
I asked him why. * Oh, well, Mr. Hancock never went 
sneaking around the school-house on his tip-toes and look- 
ing through the key-holes.' I replied, * How do you know 
your present teacher does such things?' * 'Cause we 
caught him at it,' came the reply, prompt and true. 
Conviction was complete and words were useless. That 
boy grew into a manly man. A few years ago he sat 
as President of the Cincinnati School Board. He 
expressed the boys' opinion of John Hancock, the 
teacher and the true gentleman. Mr. Hancock's sense 
of justice in dealing with boys was perfect. With it 
there sometimes was a vein of humor that was readily 
discerned, and m^ade acceptance of the most severe 
decree less repugnant to a culprit boy. 

The ^genuine boy' Mr. Hancock liked and thoroughly 
comprehended. The genuine boy likes to start to school 
immediately after breakfast. He can thus avoid doing 
any chores at home, and he can crowd more fun into the 
time before school. At the First Intermediate there was 
a rule, * Boys are not required to be in school before 8:45 
A. M. If they choose to come earlier, they must at once 
go to their respective rooms for study.' Coming to his 
school-room one morning, the hilarious shouts of half a 
hundred boys quickly assured Mr. Hancock that this rule 
was being broken. An ominous sound of the bell from 
the window stopped the play, and all the boys were 
directed to report at once to Mr. H. Less than ten came. 
The others dodged into their rooms, hoping to escape the 
consequences. With Mr. H., justice proceeded on care-- 
ful lines. He did not promptly punish the honest fellows 
who came forward, so confessing themselves violators of 



20 JOHN HANCOCK. 

the rule. He talked with them, and told them to report 
at recess. Then more talk, and an order to report at 
noon before going for dinner ; more talk and instruction 
to report before school afternoon session. Then report 
at the afternoon recess, and again after the close of 
school for the day. This order continued, until after 
school on Friday evening about forty boys reported, each 
admitting that he had played * Foot-and-a-Half — a kind 
of leap-frog game — before school in the morning, in viola- 
tion of rule. Mr. H. had been so pleasant in his seeking 
for facts that the boys became interested in bringing 
every * dodger * to the front. In time they saw fun in 
reporting to Mr. H. They would conjure together, 
trying to bring in every boy they could. I am not sure 
some of the boys did not assume that some previous 
violation of the rule entitled them to report and join in 
the investigation. What followed I have from the father 
of one of the boys. He learned that the investigation had 
closed, and asked his boy the result. * Well,' said the 
boy, * Hancock told us he disliked whipping, but his 
dislike was a constant quantity, it neither increased nor 
decreased with the number of boys, and he licked us all. 
We didn't care much for a whipping from Hancock ; he 
was kind o' funny before he went at it.' Truly, Mr. 
Hancock disliked the use of the rod. In dealing with boys 
he surely had 'malice towards none, charity for all.' " 

A SOLDIER IN THE HUNDRED DAYS' SERVICE. 

The news of Sumter's bombardment and surrender 
imparted swift heat to Mr. Hancock's patriotic blood. 
The military strain in his composition, imparted by a 
soldier father and transmitted to a soldier son, responded 



A SOLDIER FN THE HUNDRED DAYS' SERVICE. 21 

to the rumor of war. His editorials in the Journal of 
Progress betray his manifest excitement; the school- 
master's habit of peace was ruffled by the storm and 
stress of the crisis. The teachers of Cincinnati organ- 
ized a military company of Home Guards, April 20, 1861, 
only eight days after the first cannon shot of the Civil 
War sent its echo booming over the continent. The 
Journal of Progress for May, 1861, describes a flag- 
raising over the new building of the Fifth District 
School ; and mentions that President Lorin Andrews had 
become a captain, at Gambler, and that Oxford and 
Antioch Colleges, and the Southwestern Normal School at 
Lebanon had lost many of their best students by volun- 
teering — a loss which editor Hancock seemed rather to 
rejoice in than to deplore. 

In 1863, just previous to the famous Kirby Smith raid, 
and the threatened siege of Cincinnati, the teachers of 
the public and private schools were formed into a mili- 
tary body, the Teachers' Rifle Company. Early in 
1864 came the call for Hundred Days' Men from 
Ohio's Governor, and May 2, 1864, found the Teach- 
ers' Rifles a part of the 138th Regiment, O. V. I., in 
camp, under Col. S. S. Fisher. John Hancock was 
enrolled, with many of his personal friends, as a private 
soldier. What manner of man he proved himself to be, 
under the trying condition of soldier life, is well told by 
his devoted friend, Ben. B. Stewart, who sends me the 
following : 

** It became an axiom in camp, * If you would know 
a man, enlist him in the army for active service and go 
with him.' Free from home influences, and free from the 
social restraints imposed by good society, men in the 
army soon reached their natural level. All the selfish- 



22 JOHN HANCOCK. 

ness, cowardice, laziness — in short, all the mean traits in 
a man — sooner or later came to the front. In camp to 
say of a man, * We know him,' was to furnish him with a 
lasting certificate of character, good or bad. Good stand- 
ing at home was no guarantee of conduct when in the 
full swing of army life. 

Men entered the army thinking they knew one another. 
After a term of service, they came home knowing one 
another. Too often, old friendships were broken ; but new 
and lasting ones were formed. From the first, Mr. Han- 
cock was a typical soldier. He never questioned orders. 
He obeyed. He never shirked any duty, however dis- 
tasteful. In camp or on the march he was willing to look 
on the brighter side. Whether it was duty to shovel 
dirt in the fortifications on the Potomac, or cut brush on 
the Appomatox, he responded promptly and cheerfully to 
duty's call. As a soldier he had the regard of the 
meanest man in camp. More than one graceless fellow 
did better than he planned because he knew Hancock 
and desired to be esteemed by him. 

Mason D. Parker and John Hancock were friends 
from boyhood. I was born in the same county, and 
hence was adopted. We three tented together. Camp 
life in connection with special mention of Mr. Hancock 
necessarily includes us all. Parker once said, ' The 
only blemish on John's character is, he can't cook. 
The provoking feature is, he delights in his awkward- 
ness.' My friendly regard for Mr. H. has always 
been such that I deem it best to rest on Parker's testi- 
mony in the case, rather than press investigation. Mr. 
H. did once undertake to make our morning coffee. We 
kept our coffee in a bag. Mr. Hancock never realized 
apparently that in the culinary art * exact science ' is 



A SOLDIER IN THE HUNDRED DAYS* SERVICE. 23 

always requisite. He tried to make coffee and at the 
same time discuss the results of a recent cavalry raid 
against the Weldon Railroad. He got lost on the raid 
and kept on making the coffee. He shook our coffee bag 
over the coffee-pot as he talked, until the dry brown 
coffee poured out over the top. Parker was a prudent 
housekeeper. He thundered out, * John, mercy sakes 
alive — what are you doing .?' *Why, Mason ! I guess 
I've put in a leetle too much.' The conversation of 
these time-tried friends sparkled often with wit and 
humor. Mohn, I'm a man of remarkable forethought.' 
*Well, Mason, I never knew it.' 'Yes, John, I am a 
man of remarkable forethought — but it always comes 
behind.' Another time, 'John! I wish you'd take me 
out and knock me in the head.' 'All right, but what 
for, Mason.?' ' Well, I forget to do something I ought to 
have done.' The forgotton 'something' was never a 
serious matter. 

Near our camp the colored people were holding a 
camp-meeting. We all felt an interest in it and the 
leader, Uncle Richard Baily. ' Uncle Richard ' was a 
colored brother advanced in years. He told us they 
called their gathering 'The Union Camp Meeting,' 
because it was the first one ever held without the 
permission of masters, and also because of the presence 
of 'de union soldiers.' Uncle Richard reported at our 
tent almost every morning on one pretext or another. 
One night during service the old man was standing in 
the pulpit, when he suddenly made a leap in the air that 
seemed likely to land him outside the pulpit and to end 
in disaster. The brethren caught him and placed him 
safely on his feet. When he visited us next morning 
Mr. Hancock gravely inquired why he jumped so high 



24 JOHN HANCOCIC. 

last night. * Well, Massa ! when the Migion ob de 
Lawd Jesus Christ git in my soul dis ole body it aint 
nothin'; it go right up.' It surely did go up. The last 
night of the series, the meeting was a * powerful one.' 
When Uncle Richard reported in the morning Mr. Han- 
cock asked him how many were converted. 'About 
five head shuah, and more, I think, come in by mawnin,' 
Counting immortal souls by the head seemed droll 
enough, but at once adopting Uncle Richard's method, 
Mr. H. asked * how many head had been converted in all.' 
' Twenty-three head, sah,* came the answer, in tones 
that implied no doubt. We never, by any levity of 
manner, led Uncle Richard to think we were otherwise 
than solemnly impressed. Pleasant reminiscences these. 
How many more do follow, but not for record here. 

One evening, in the quiet of my home, after a rush- 
ing day — here in busy New York — a newspaper slip was 
handed me. It told me * John Hancock died at his desk, 
in the midst of his work* — the work he loved. Dead? 
On the hearts of those v/ho love him still is written * not 
dead.* Not mustered out, but mustered in. He heard 
the sound of the bugle call and entered into a service of 
love forever. Thus we believe, and so — dear friend of 
many years- — sure that, at the longest, we soon shall 
follow thee, we will say not good night, but in a better 
world *bid thee good morning.' " 

To this tribute, at once humorous and pathetic, we 
may here appropriately add the testimony of another 
friend and comrade, Mr. Rickoff, who writes : 

*'A military company formed shortly after the break- 
ing out of the War of the Rebellion, and of which Mr. 
Hancock and I were both members, being called into 
service in the spring of 1864, we were thrown together 



A SOLDIER IN THE HUNDRED DAYS' SERVICE. 25 

the following summer more intimately than at any time 
before. Though the company was not exposed to any 
particular danger nor subject for any considerable time 
at a stretch to any severe privations, yet the campaign 
was not all a pleasant picnic to be remembered with 
unwonted pleasure. To men who had not for years, 
perhaps never, been accustomed to physical labor of any 
kind, marching for two or three days together in dusty 
sand two or three inches deep, carrying arms, ammu- 
nitions, haversack and knapsack till strong men fainted, 
and when in camp, digging in trenches with pickaxe and 
spade, were, to say the least, not pleasant recreations. 
Under these circumstances Mr. Hancock bore the test of 
true manhood. His patient endurance, his unflinching 
performance of every duty, his readiness to aid those of 
his comrades who were not so strong as himself, were fit 
subjects for the admiration of all. His humorous anec- 
dotes enlivened the march; reminiscences drawn from 
readings of history and literature, humorous comments 
on the rumors that at times agitated the regiment, 
and his discussions of military and political characters 
then prominent, served to inform as well as entertain his 
mates at the camp-fire. 

When I recall these things to mind my thought recurs 
to Mason D. Parker, who was Mr. Hancock's most inti- 
mate friend. He was a man of fine literary taste and a 
writer of ability. The essays that he read in* the liter- 
ary clubs were worthy of the best magazines, but his 
ideals of excellence were so high and his modesty so 
dominant that he shrank from any effort to bring them 
into public notice in any form. He had been recom- 
mended for employment in the schools of Cincinnati by 
Mr. Hancock, and at the time of the Hundred Days' 



26 JOHN HANCOCK. 

Service he was Principal of one of the Intermediates. 
On the march from Fort Powhatan to City Point he sank 
at the roadside, so exhausted that his vitality was per- 
manently affected, and shortly after his return home he 
bade his wife and little daughter his last good-bye." 

The devoted friendship existing between Hancock and 
Parker, feelingly dwelt upon by both Mr. Stewart and 
Mr. Rickoff, demands special commemoration in these 
pages, and there is a mournful satisfaction in recording 
its almost sacred history. These congenial spirits were 
to each other as Damon and Pythias. Nothing more 
beautiful and touching in biography than the noble, 
manly, tender, and poetical attachment between these 
faithful souls. They went to school together ; they pur- 
sued common studies; they roomed together in the 
bachelor days when teaching in Cincinnati; they went 
together courting their sweethearts ; they were in almost 
daily intercourse up to the time of Parker's death. Mr. 
E. C. Ellis writing of Mr. Hancock's love for ''Mase" 

Parker says, *'A few years ago I visited H at his 

home in Chillicothe, and, in talking over the bygone, the 
death of Parker was referred to, and Dr. Hancock heav- 
ing a deep sigh said, * The death of Mason D. Parker 
was the heaviest blow of my life. He was a brilliant 
young man, devoted to his books, a staunch friend, and 
I felt that 1 could not live without him.' " . 

Shortly after Parker's death, Mr. Hancock wrote a 
sketch of his life and character, which was published in 
the ** Ohio Educational Monthly," and which is repro- 
duced among the selections contained in this volume. 



27 

SUPERINTENDS A BUSINESS COLLEGE. 

On his return home after the Hundred Days' Service, 
Mr. Hancock resigned his position as Principal of the 
First Intermediate School, and entered into an engage- 
ment with Richard Nelson to become Superintendent of 
Nelson's Commercial College, at a salary of $2,000 a 
year. On the occasion of his retirement from the school 
his assistant teachers presented him with a magnificent 
set of Shakespeare's works. His friend and first assist- 
ant, Mr. B. B. Stewart, also resigned the place he had 
filled in the First Intermediate School, and was likewise 
employed by the Nelson Business College. 

The general duties of Mr. Hancock in the college 
were managerial. His executive capacity was exercised 
in the efficient control of the students. In addition to 
his supervisory work he took upon him the editorship of 
a weekly newspaper, 'Mhe News and Educator," pub- 
lished by Nelson & Co. 

Not long after his installment in this new position, Mr. 
Hancock was made the recipient of a splendid silver ser- 
vice, the gift of friends connected with the work of edu- 
cation. The writer recalls every circumstance of the 
occasion on which the present was bestowed, on the 
evening of November 10, 1865, ir^ one of the rooms of 
the Nelson College. An exceedingly merry company of 
ladies and gentlemen assembled, quite unexpectedly to 
Mr. Hancock, who was overcome with surprise and 
pleased confusion when Mr. Rickoff addressed him in 
these words : 

'' Mr. Hancock :— I am requested by your old friends 
among the Teachers and Trustees of the Schools, to pre- 
sent you, in their behalf, these testimonials of their high 



28 JOHN HANCOCK. 

appreciation of your success as a teacher, and their 
regard for you as a man. 

No evidence of your success as an instructor of youth 
is necessary, other than the great prosperity in which 
we find the First Intermediate School. I well recollect 
with what diffidence, almost reluctance, you consented 
to take charge of it, when, ten years ago, in behalf of 
the Trustees, I tendered to you its principalship. The 
experiment of the Intermediate School System depended 
in no slight degree upon the result of our action. The 
institution was committed to you with confidence, and I 
have to say to-night that no one has ever doubted the 
wisdom of the choice we then made. The final adoption 
of the Intermediate scheme was doubtless owing to your 
skill and indomitable perseverance. You secured not 
only the success of the school, but since you went into 
it, not less than a thousand pupils have passed through 
the prescribed course under your direction, and I may 
safely say that in as many young and enthusiastic 
hearts, kind remembrances of you are warmly cherished. 

The gentlemen and ladies who have been associated 
with you, as assistant teachers, will always remember 
you with peculiar satisfaction. In their arduous and 
perplexing duties you have given them wise counsel and 
unflinching support. That you have had a good influ- 
ence upon them it is sufficient evidence for us to call to 
mind the fact that a large proportion of those who have 
been with you have become most devoted and successful 
teachers in the schools. The delicacy of private friend- 
ship forbids us to speak of your genial qualities as a 
friend with the freedom which it is our duty to use 
when speaking of the way in which you have discharged 
your public duties. The free expression of gratitude for 



SUPERINTENDS A BUSINESS COLLEGE. 29 

a man's public services, though they be very great, is 
sometimes obstructed by a want of sympathy for the 
man himself. Let the cordiality of your friends here 
assembled to-night testify for them whether this be so in 
your case. 

For their sake, we regret that you are leaving the 
public schools, but from the part you have always taken 
in public affairs, we have no doubt that you will continue 
to show an active interest in their welfare." 

The embarrassment of Mr. Hancock, and the abound- 
ing good humor of the company, prompted much genial 
speech-making and sportive talk on this informal occasion, 
and among the personal addresses brought out was a 
playful skit in verse entitled ** Hancock John," which 
afforded its victim considerable amusement at the time, 
and was often quoted by him with ludicrous gravity, in 
after years. The passage which he most relished in 
this metrical rhyme reads : 

" O number 1 is Hancock John, 

And letter A is he, — 

He loveth youth, he loveth truth. 

He loveth libertee ; 

He loveth roast chickens. 

He loveth Charles Dickens, 

He loveth his children and wife, 

He loveth a sunshiny life, 

He loveth his friend and his nation, 

And the pedagogue's noble vocation ; 

He loveth a funny conundrum. 

He laughs at your puns though you blund'r 'em ; 

Stupidity soon is he sick of, 

He loveth to love Andy Rickoff ; 

Invention he knoweth the trick of ; 

His editor's pen is a swinger, 

He writeth like pepper and ginger ; 



30 JOHN HANCOCK. 

He loveth a man that is honest ; 
Deceit in his character non est ; 
He isn't deficient in temper, 
He'll fight for his principles semper; 
He bled in the Hundred Days' service, 
And wasn't affrighted or nervous." 

EMPLOYED BY WILSON, HINKLE & CO. 

Mr. Hancock's connection with the Commercial Col- 
lege was not of long continuance. He was employed, in 
1866, by Wilson, Hinkle & Co., school-book publishers 
of Cincinnati, and he collected material for a new series 
of School Readers. He entered upon this work early 
in the year, had an office in the publishing house, and 
was regular and prompt in attendance upon his duties. 
In collecting suitable material for the work assigned him, 
he was obliged, in his reading and research, to range 
widely over a broad field of literature, embracing the 
writings of the best authors of both prose and verse in 
the English language. His industry, good taste, and 
sound judgment enabled him in the course of a few 
months to bring together a mass of material admirably 
adapted to the end in view. He then entered upon the 
work of arrangement and progressive gradation of his 
selections, the composition of brief biographical sketches 
of authors, explanatory notes, illustrations and comments. 
While thus employed he devoted considerable time to 
attendance upon Teachers' Institutes in Ohio, Indiana, 
and Kentucky, lecturing upon educational topics, and 
furnishing valuable class instruction. While so engaged 
he was able to submit the material he had compiled 
to the criticism and judgment of practical educators, 
and learn their views as to its adaptation to school- 



SUPERINTENDENT OF CINCINNATI SCHOOLS. 31 

room uses. He was thus making most satisfactory 
progress in the preparation of his manuscript, and 
was repeatedly assured by the senior member of the 
publishing house of the approval of his work by himself 
and associates. But Mr. Hancock, while a patient and 
cheerful worker wherever duty placed him, was ambi- 
tious of success in a more active and public sphere of 
education. The Superintendency of the Public Schools 
of Cincinnati was offered him, and after brief hesitation 
he accepted it, necessarily leaving to other hands the 
completion of the literary work upon which he had been 
engaged. 

During the year he was with Wilson, Hinkle & Co. 
he displayed in a high degree those qualities which 
characterized his career in every field of labor in which 
he engaged, — earnestness, zeal, conscientious fidelity 
and devotion to his work, and a generous, hearty sym- 
pathy, and sunny cheer that endeared him to all with 
whom he came in contact. His withdrawal from the 
work upon which he was so successfully engaged was 
deeply regretted by everyone connected with the house, 
but by no one more sincerely than by his early and life- 
long friend, Mr. Wilson. Had he desired to remain in the 
business, he probably would soon have been promoted 
to a partnership in the great firm. 

SUPERINTENDENT OF CINCINNATI SCHOOLS. 

Mr. Hancock was elected to the superintendency of 
the public schools of Cincinnati, in September, 1867, 
succeeding Lyman Harding. Samuel S. Fisher was at 
the time President of the Cincinnati Board of Education. 

In the Spring of 1868, the Board granted to the Super- 



32 JOHN HANCOCK. 

intendent a three weeks' leave of absence, and made an 
appropriation to pay his expenses, in order to afford him 
an opportunity to visit some of the eastern cities to study 
the workings of their public schools and other educa- 
tional institutions. Mr. Hancock set out on this tour 
of inspection on May 15, 1868, and, after his return, 
embodied in his first Annual Report, for the year ending 
June 30, 1868, the results of his observations. The 
report is a lengthy one extending over 62 pages, and is a 
valuable document of its kind. The first schools visited 
were those of Cleveland, Ohio, then recently reorgan- 
ized by Mr. Rickoff ; and of these a pretty full description 
is given. From Cleveland he passed on to Oswego, and 
saw the Normal and other schools, under the guidance of 
E. A. Sheldon. Proceeding to Boston, Mr. Hancock was 
entertained by Superintendent Philbrick, who explained 
to him all the peculiarities of the Common School System 
as exhibited in the famous center of Yankee culture. 
The Cincinnati pilgrim did not fail to cross the Charles 
and look inside Cambridge walls, — he sought out Dr. 
Hill, then President of Harvard, and caught glowing 
ideas from him. The Boston Public Library had strong 
attractions for our Ohio educator : he says of it in his 
report, ^'I doubt whether the public schools themselves 
are doing a much more important work than this public 
library." From New England he went to New York, 
and spent several days visiting the schools of New York 
City and Brooklyn. Before turning his face homeward, 
however, he revisited Boston, the charm of whose liter- 
ary institutions seems to have decidedly attracted his 
taste. 

After recounting the particulars of this eastern sojourn 
in a graphic manner, the Report for 1868 deals with 



SUPERINTENDENT OF CINCINNATI SCHOOLS. 33 

several other topics ; viz. : State Normal Schools, Educa- 
tion in France, Prussia and England, and the Condition 
of the Cincinnati Schools. The Superintendent dwelt 
upon the importance of ''good reading" in the schools, 
and still more earnestly on the paramount necessity of 
"moral education" in all grades. A step in progress 
is marked in the announcement that ** It is proposed, 
the coming year, to begin the instruction of all the pupils 
in our Public Schools in Drawing. This," says the 
Report, 'Ms an experiment that has not been made in 
any other city in this country." 

Mr. Hancock's Semi-Annual Report, January, 1869, 
discusses the several branches of learning required to be 
taught in the city schools. It states that the experiment 
of introducing Drawing in all grades had proven success- 
ful ; and recommends that Phonography be made a regu- 
lar exercise in the Intermediate Schools. The Superin- 
tendent took much interest in the City Normal School, 
which was first opened in 1869, with Miss Sarah D. 
Dugan, of Oswego, as principal. Discussing the con- 
dition of pupils in the lower grades, Mr. Hancock 
suggested to the Board that fewer hours of study be 
required of the children. He said, " I believe they are 
kept in school too long." 

In his Report of June, 1869, he calls attention to the 
fact that the gap is too wide between the Intermediate 
and the High Schools, and proposes a better adjustment 
of the courses of study. He warns the Board and the 
teachers against the danger, always imminent in the 
schools of a large city, that modes of instruction may 
fall into mechanical routine ; and deprecates such a result 
as fatal to the best ends of human training. He would 
have more attention paid to cultural studies such as lead 



34 JOHN HANCOCK. 

to generous ideas, wide sympathy and lofty aspiration. 
As regards sciiool government he declares, with the 
emphasis of experience, *'Too much importance can not 
be attached to discipline in a great school system. It 
lies at the very foundation of both intellectual and moral 
success. A more thoroughly demoralizing institution 
does not exist than a disorderly school." 

The Superintendent's Reports for 1870 are devoted 
largely to general discussion of the philosophy of educa- 
tion, and to an urgent presentation of the importance of 
higher learning as supplementary to the common school 
courses. The merits and claims of Cincinnati University 
are set forth with much force. Another question con- 
sidered is that of compulsory laws to secure school 
attendance, which Hancock strongly favored. 

The Report for 1871 devotes many pages to school 
statistics. It also enters into the practical consideration 
of several minor details of advice, suggestion and criticism 
concerning methods and motives of school teaching and 
management. Objection is made to concert reciting, 
to mere memoriter tests of knowledge, to the abuse of 
the percentage system, and to a blind and mechanical 
dependence upon text-books and records. Dr. Hancock's 
opinion respecting the inutility of records of recitation is 
very positive. He says : '* I am sure that the record of 
recitations of the pupils kept by the teachers of the higher 
grades of the District Schools, and in all the grades of 
the Intermediate and High Schools, might be profitably 
dispensed with." In order to break up the prevailing 
tendency to parrot-like repetition of words without ideas, 
the method of objective teaching, to which the Normal 
School of Oswego, New York, had given a new impulse, 
was adopted in Cincinnati, and, for a time, it produced 



SUPERINTENDENT OF CINCINNATI SCHOOLS. 35 

excellent results. The method was applied especially 
to language teaching, with the design to animate the 
observing powers and to elicit original expression. Mr. 
Hancock wrote, with enthusiasm: *Mf the Cincinnati 
Schools possess one distinguishing trait above all others, 
it is the prominence that language culture occupies in the 
course of study." 

Following out the theories suggested by the objective 
method, and persistently combating rote study and per- 
functory teaching, the Superintendent made the most 
of drawing, music, and language lessons, as means of 
awakening the mind and firing a genuine interest in 
school work. With a similar purpose he introduced a 
new plan of imparting the facts of history, — the plan of 
continuous and animated reading, instead of the cut-and- 
dried method in vogue. It was hoped the experiment 
would relieve the pupils of drudgery hateful to them, and 
as ineffectual as repulsive; but the nev/ departure was 
only partially successful. 

Taken throughout, the administration of Mr. Hancock, 
covering a period of seven years, was characterized by 
his policy of opposition to dullness, routine ''cram," and 
in general, to mechanical as distinguished from vital 
education. The Superintendent thought constantly of 
the development of the children's faculties, and measured 
the value of all books and methods by their result in 
producing mental power and moral conduct. He saw no 
probability of much good to be derived from any study or 
system that was not intelligently applied by competent 
and conscientious teachers. His reports insist again and 
again upon the necessity of professional fitness on the 
part of instructors in every grade, and therefore upon the 
paramount importance of Normal Schools, Teachers' 



36 JOHN HANCOCK. 

Institutes, and, above all, the habit of reading. One of 
his reports strenuously recommends the city teachers to 
make a systematic study of the science of education; 
and counsels every teacher to possess himself of a collec- 
tion of reference books. The principal test that he would 
apply to ascertain the character and culture of teachers 
and pupils is the test of a liberal, but pointed and sug- 
gestive, written examination. 

It has been said that Dr. Hancock pursued a very 
conservative course in the discharge of his duties as 
Superintendent of the Cincinnati Schools. If by this is 
meant that he was moderate and deliberate in his pro- 
cedure, it is true ; but it would not be fair to charge him 
with that sort of conservatism which clings to the dead 
past and seeks to compromise with the living future. I 
should say he was decidedly progressive. The period 
of his superintendency fell in a time of much political, 
religious and social agitation. One of the " burning 
questions," that excited the Board of Education, and the 
city of Cincinnati, while he was in office, was the 
memorable one of the Bible in the Public Schools. The 
outcome of the long battle, as all the world knows, was 
the adoption of a rule forbidding the reading of the Scrip- 
ture in the Schools. In this contest the Superintendent's 
sympathies were not with the majority of the Board ; — he 
thought the Bible should be retained, — and perhaps it is 
owing to the decided position he took against its removal 
that many considered him a strict conservative. 

In June, 1^74, Mr. Hancock was succeeded in office 
by Dr. John B. Peaslee. 



37 



JOINS CINCINNATI LITERARY CLUB. 

In 1867, Mr. Hancock joined the Cincinnati Literary 
Club, a society organized in 1849, which still exists and 
has ever maintained a very high rank as regards member- 
ship, and the tone of its literary and social exercises. It 
is exclusively a gentlemen's club, of limited numbers, 
with elegant and rather expensive appointments, and 
holds its delightful meetings regularly every Saturday 
night. Mr. Hancock held his membership in this charm- 
ing club during the whole period of his Superintendency 
of the Cincinnati Schools ; was a regular attendant upon 
its meetings, and took part in all its privileges and 
pleasures. The records of the Club show that he 
contributed at least ten papers to its programs, either 
through its Budget or as appointed essay reader, with 
title and time of presentation as follows: American 
Humorists, February 29, 1868; The New Education, May 
I, 1869; The Oldfashioned Schoolmaster, January 22, 
1870; Conversation, December 17, 1870; The School- 
master, February i, 1873; The Statesman's Manual, 
February 22, 1873 ; The Cincinnati University, January 
31, 1874; Our Hundredth Birthday, January 4, 1876; 
Civilization and Humor, January 29, 1876 ; Glimpses 
from the Greek, a poem. May 30, 1885. For the year 
1874-5, ^^- Hancock was president of the Literary Club. 

How keenly he relished the associations of the Club, 
is attested by a passage from one of his unconstrained 
letters, written to Prof. E. S. Cox, the Superintendent of 
the Schools of Portsmouth, Ohio, November i, 1887. 
The letter says: ** Saturday night I ran down to Cincin- 
nati (from Chillicothe) to attend the anniversary of the 
Literary Club. This Club is unique among the clubs of 



38 JOHN HANCOCK. 

the world, and has included in its membership nearly all 
the distinguished people of South-western Ohio, — and 
some not so distinguished. Among the former may be 
mentioned Chase, Hayes, Hoadley, Halstead, Noyes, 
Spofford, Librarian of Congress, Donn Piatt, J. J. Piatt, 
Judge Taft, General Pope, etc. If I know myself, I have 
as little of the snob about me as any man living ; yet' I 
must confess that there is to me a particular charm in 
the society of highly cultivated gentlemen, — especially of 
young men, — people whose courtesy fits like a tailor- 
made coat, and not as though it were made for another 
man. Such people are sometimes called aristocrats by 
envious outsiders. But whatever they may be called, 
they are admirable fellows. I have not been at a meet- 
ing before for several years, and the hearty reception by 
old friends, made me feel as though I was the owner of a 
corner in Elysium.'* 

TEN YEARS IN DAYTON. 

It is unnecessary to record the details of Dr. Hancock's 
career as Superintendent of the Dayton Schools. Much 
of his work was necessarily in the ordinary routine which 
the best usage in educational supervision has established 
in the leading cities of Ohio. Yet he was little disposed 
to run the educational car in old ruts, and ever and anon 
he put his strong shoulder to the wheel to urge usage in 
the direction of well-considered reform. He tried some 
experiments in Dayton, the purpose of which was to 
ascertain the actual contents of children's minds. His 
Reports, though similar in their leading doctrines to those 
he had produced in Cincinnati, were new in subject 



TEN YEARS IN DAYTON. 39 

matter, and wisely adapted to the conditions of his 
changed field of action. 

In June, 1877, Dr. W. D. Henkle, then editor of the 
Ohio Educational Monthly, said, in a review, ''The 
Report of the Dayton Schools is a valuable document. 
It has several features that are new to us. It is not 
necessary to say that Superintendent Hancock discusses 
the topics selected by him with his accustomed vigor." 
Calling attention to the fact stated in the Report that 
*'the whole number of cases of tardiness in the year did 
not average one for each pupil," Henkle remarks that 
"such a result is astonishing." In another number of 
the Monthly, giving an account of an Institute which he 
had just attended in Dayton, Mr. Henkle said, "Super- 
intendent Hancock resolved to depart from the usual 
routine and introduced some new features. In this he 
was successful." 

Dr. Hancock was Superintendent of the Dayton 
Schools for ten years, from 1874 to 1884, under Repub- 
lican city rule, and he- was retired, by a strictly party 
vote, when a Democratic Board came into political power. 
He was succeeded by Dr. J. J. Burns. 

On the occasion of Dr. Hancock's retirement from 
the Superintendency, a number of gentlemen, who had 
been members of the School Board in the course of his 
incumbency, gave him a banquet, and took the oppor- 
tunity to compliment him in cordial speeches, which 
were fully reported in the daily Journal. Mr. Robert 
W. Steele, as chairman of the meeting, gave expression 
to the general feeling in an address, part of which is 
here reproduced. 

On taking the chair Mr. Steele said: 

** We have met in this social way as members of the 



40 JOHN HANCOCK. 

Board of Education, past and present, to give expression 
to our regard for Dr. John Hancock as a man and as the 
Superintendent of our public schools. 

Dr. Hancock may look back with proud satisfaction 
to his ten years of labor in Dayton. It might well 
satisfy the laudable ambition of any man to be permitted 
for so long a time to impress and mould the character of 
thousands of youth and children. As members of the 
Board of Education, associated with him at various times 
in his work, we have had the best means of knowing 
how faithfully and efficiently he has discharged the 
duties of his office. He has not been a mere office 
Superintendent, but has given his whole time during 
school hours to personal supervision of the daily work 
of the schoolroom. While an excellent general system 
of instruction has been adhered to, rigid rules have not 
been enforced to crush out the individuality of teachers. 
He has insisted on good work, but has been content 
when it has been accomplished in whatever manner. 
He has harmonized the discordant elements in our 
schools, and during his administration peace and good 
will have characterized all the intercourse between 
superintendent and teachers. But best of all, he has 
exerted a beneficent influence on our schools by the 
purity of his character. On all moral questions he has 
given no doubtful sound. No boy in our schools could 
point to his example as an excuse for the slightest 
departure from the purest morality. In addition to his 
work in the schools he has ever been a public-spirited 
citizen. No effort to advance the intellectual and moral 
culture of the community has failed to enlist his warm 
sympathy and support. 

With such an appreciation of your character and 



TEN YEARS IN DAYTON. 41 

work, you, Dr. Hancock, need no assurance from us that 
we deeply regret your removal from our midst. A man 
of national reputation in your profession, you have 
reflected honor on our city by your residence here, and 
have made our schools widely known for their excellence. 
A generous, warm-hearted friend, we shall miss you in 
all the walks of life. Our earnest good wishes for your 
prosperity and success will follow you to your new field 
of labor. You need not seek a place to work, for places 
will seek you. We envy the city that shall secure for 
superintendent of its schools a man of your ability and 
ripe experience. What is our great loss will be the 
great gain of that city." 

Thrown out of employment by the political change 
we have mentioned. Dr. Hancock entered upon an 
enforced vacation of a year. It was the only year of 
his life, since he began the work of teaching, in which 
he had no regular work to do. The power of habit 
had so fixed upon him the expectation and performance 
of set duties, that, when the schools opened in the 
autumn of 1884, he was at a loss what to do with 
himself. The strange, unwonted experience of having 
nothing in particular to do, produced novel sensations. 
At first he hardly knew whether he had stepped into a 
vacuum, or into a new atmosphere vital with exhilarat- 
ing qualities. He wrote to a familiar friend, ** I wish 
you would tell me how to put in leisure time to the best 
advantage. I do nothing — that is of business profit — and 
still I seem to be about as busy as I did when I had 
regular employment. I do some more reading, but not 
so much more as 1 expected. Yet life has put on other 
colors, and somehow I feel freer, — and I am sure you will 
not mistake me when I say manlier, — than when I was 



42 * JOHN HANCOCK. 

tramping in the old bark mill round. Variety of employ- 
ment and scene seems to me to be the essence of the 
higher life.'* Among the books that he read in this 
fallow period were Pascal's '' Pensles," " Obiter Dicta," 
James Payn's ''Literary Recollections," Cross's "Life 
of George Eliot," Mrs. Field's ''Reminiscences of Emer- 
son," and Matthew Arnold's " Essays in Criticism." He 
found stimulation also in Professor Seely's three articles 
on Goethe, in the Cotemporary Review. He did some 
writing, in the way of lectures, and contributions for the 
Chicago Present Age, and other periodicals. The 
meeting of the National Association of July, 1884, he 
enjoyed to the top of his bent. "We had the grandest 
education meeting at Madison," he writes, "ever held 
on this continent, perhaps in the world. In both num- 
bers and quality it was inspiring." 

Dr. Hancock was appointed in November, 1884, by 
State School Commissioner Brown, to assist in preparing 
the Ohio Education Exhibit, for the World's Fair at New 
Orleans ; and he spent several weeks in New Orleans, 
in charge of the interests of his State. An article of 
several pages, in the June number of the Ohio Educa- 
tional Monthly, gives his report of the "Ohio Exhibit." 

As time wore on, and no prospect of satisfactory 
regular employment opened before him, Dr. Hancock, in 
spite of his optimistic nature, yielded to depression. He 
grew tired of rest, and sighed even to be tramping once 
more in the " old bark mill round." " I am still drifting. 
I know not yet what I shall be, nor where," he said 
despondently. Again, to one who had expressed a 
shrinking dread of returning to the wearing drudgery of 
the school-room, to be ground in a "mill of boys," he 
wrote, in April, 1885, "There are worse things than 



SUPERINTENDENT IN CHILLICOTHE. 43 

being ground in a mill of boys, and one is to have 
nothing to do when you need something to do." At last 
a door opened. Superintendent William Richardson 
retired from the Chillicothe schools to take a place in 
Sedalia, Missouri, and Dr. Hancock was called to fill the 
vacancy. 

SUPERINTENDENT IN CHILLICOTHE. 

In the summer of 1885, Dr. Hancock received a 
unanimous call to take charge of the schools of Chilli- 
cothe, the old capital of Ohio. This call was due in 
large measure to the influence of Hon. B. F. Stone, a 
man of vigorous intellect and of wide knowledge of 
educators and educational work. 

Dr. Hancock remained in charge of the Chillicothe 
schools until the winter of 1889, when he retired to 
accept an appointment to the office of State School 
Commissioner. 1 am indebted to his successor in Chilli- 
cothe, Superintendent E. S. Cox, for a succinct estimate 
of Dr. Hancock's character, and his educational services 
in Chillicothe. Professor Cox writes, '* He left every- 
where on the school system of Chillicothe the marks of 
a large and liberal intelligence. He was not a mere 
instrumental superintendent, but a man of a real power 
who uplifted whatever he touched. Whether considered 
as an educator or a man, what impressed one most was, 
I think, his noble breadth of spirit. To the last he 
remained untouched by professional pedantries, and his 
mind was always open to the best thought of his time. 
Under the supervision of such a man, no system of 
schools could long remain mean or narrow, and I think 
every teacher under his charge was constantly stimulated 
to higher work by his inspiring example. I have never 



44 JOHN HANCOCK. 

known any man who was more loved and honored by 
his teachers and by his Board of Education." 

These warm expressions of Professor Cox are fully 
borne out by the general testimony of Chillicothe people, 
young and old, and by the city newspapers of whatever 
party. The Chillicothe Leader, for example, used 
the following most emphatic language: **Dr. Hancock 
was the best friend the teachers of the Chillicothe public 
schools ever had; he was the best friend the scholars 
of the public schools ever had ; he was the best friend 
the Board of Education ever had." The feeling of the 
citizens towards him is well expressed in the words of 
an accomplished and influential lady of Chillicothe, 
Mrs. M. C. Nipgen, who writes: '*How universally 
was he admired for his great, logical mind ; how much 
beloved for his tender, sympathetic heart ! His capacities 
were many, and he used them; his opportunities great, 
and he employed them. He was a true man, one of 
God's noblemen, faithful and zealous in duty, just, gen- 
erous, — a man among ten thousand." 

If we inquire by what means it was, — by what art 
this unostentatious man won the confidence and liking of 
so many men, women and children, in so short a time, 
the answer is not hard to give. He used *' no art at all." 
Ripe and wise and good-hearted, he gave himself up 
simply and wholly to his duty. He served the com- 
munity. He mixed with the people. He took part in 
the affairs of the tov/n, got acquainted with families, 
went to church, aided the libraries, founded night schools 
and reading circles, joined in the services of Decoration 
Day. He took a real interest in his work and in his 
"charge." What a " pastorate " is that 1 — ^the flock that 
a Superintendent of a city school shepherds. In a letter 



SUPERINTENDENT IN CHILLICOTHE. 45 

to Professor Cox, dated October 23, 1888, Hancock 
speaks of a visit he made to Columbus for the encourage- 
ment of some Chillicothe boys who had gone to college. 
**We have quite a number of students in the University 
there," he explains, **who were writing home in a 
discouraged sort of way. So I concluded to run up and 
see whether I couldn't put them into a happier frame of 
mind. This I think I succeeded in doing. They are an 
excellent lot of boys, likely to do well, if they get the 
right start." Such disinterested services as this, simple 
though they seem, are the kind that endear men to their 
fellows and win lasting gratitude. Many men are ready 
to promise help, and forget the promise ; or to do a good 
turn with the implied expectation that an equivalent 
shall be rendered; but how few volunteer a helping 
hand, or seek opportunities of doing secret good to others 
without a thought of putting them under obligation. John 
Hancock was one of the few. He was always assisting 
others in a practical way by word and deed. In looking 
over the shower of telegrams and letters of condolence 
that came from everywhere to Mrs. Hancock after her 
husband's death, I have been surprised at the number 
that make tearful acknowledgment of kindnesses received 
from this generous and magnanimous man. It adds to 
the pathos and beauty of these messages that many of 
them are from comparatively humble sources — from 
those who found a friend in time of need, and who could 
pay only in the coin of love. 

Young teachers — old teachers, too, but especially 
young teachers — struggling to obtain a secure position 
were often put in the way of prosperity by Dr. Hancock's 
influence, provided he felt quite sure of their uprightness 
and professional fitness. His cheerful and hopeful dis- 



46 JOHN HANCOCK. 

position prompted him to lift the burden of despondency 
from those whom he discovered to be cast down by any 
sort of trouble, physical, pecuniary or mental. His sun- 
shine dispelled the clouds. We have seen how he went 
up to Columbus to put the college boys in a ** better 
frame of mind." The medicine of his cheering words 
was not infrequently administered to men and women 
as well as to boys and girls, though not obtrusively or 
officiously. To a personal friend of his in eastern 
Ohio, — a Superintendent temporarily out of a situation, 
and therefore dejected, — he wrote, in October, 1888 : 
''Don't begin to distress yourself. Such feelings are 
apt to creep over one situated as you are. I speak from 
experience. The year I was out of employment I often 
found myself dropping into the belief that I was a first- 
class humbug, and always had been. If it hadn't been 
for assurances which occasionally came from friends in 
whom I had confidence, I don't know to what depths 
of wretchedness I might have fallen. Keep out of that 
Slough of Despond." 

Dr. Hancock's habitual conduct in Chillicothe seems 
to have been even more than usually controlled by the 
guidance of the golden rule. "Help ye one another" 
was the text that he obeyed from principle and from 
impulse. This impelled him to undertake more work 
than he should have done. He wrote to Professor Cox, 
in February, 1888 : "I am likely to have the duties of a 
County Examiner thrust upon me. Think of three 
examiners being rolled into one ! — State, City, County, 
— ^there's honor for you ! And now comes General Hurst, 
and commissions me as County Commissioner for the 
State Centennial. But this honor I must put aside. I 
shall have to draw the line somewhere. Iron, as I have 



STATE SCHOOL COMMISSIONER. 47 

generally thought myself to be, — even iron may be 
crushed. I won't neglect my regular duties in the 
smallest degree for any outside work." 

STATE SCHOOL COMMISSIONER. 

Dr. Hancock's field of labor was transferred from the 
old Capital to the new, in the autumn of 1888. Hon. 
Eli T. Tappan, Commissioner of Common Schools, died, 
in office, of heart disease, resulting in brain paralysis, 
October 23, 1888; and Governor Foraker appointed Dr. 
Hancock to fill out the term which expired the second 
Monday in July, 1890. At the Republican Convention 
held in Columbus, January 26, 1889, Dr. Hancock was 
nominated to succeed himself, and he was elected in the 
following November, for the regular term to expire in 
July, 1893. He discharged the duties of the office until 
the date of his death, June 2, 1891, something over two 
years and seven months. Within that time he issued 
three Reports, being the 35th, 36th and 37th Annual 
Reports of the State Commissioner to the General 
Assembly of Ohio, for the years 1888, 1889 and 1890, 

The First Report of Commissioner Hancock, trans- 
mitted to Governor J. B. Foraker, March 2, 1889, is 
taken up mainly with a biographical sketch of Dr. Eli 
Todd Tappan. It contains, also, **as a specimen of Dr. 
Tappan's style of thought, and as a fresh and vigorous 
discussion of an important educational topic, his inaugural 
address as President of the National Education Associa- 
tion, delivered at Saratoga Springs, July 9, 1883." 

Having thus paid sincere, delicate and merited respect 
and honor to his predecessor. Dr. Hancock modestly fore- 
casts his own purposes in a brief view of the history of 



48 JOHN HANCOCK. 

school legislation in Ohio, closing with the recommenda- 
tion of certain desirable changes in the law, especially 
in regard to one of his favorite measures; viz.. County 
School Supervision. 

The spirit, and the essential substance of the ideas 
put forward in this his first State document are couched 
in the following extract : 

** What our school system needs most is reorganiza- 
tion on a definite and comprehensive plan. What would 
approximate a perfect system, according to my judgment, 
would be to make the township the educational unit, 
with its Board and its Superintendent. Above this 
should be a County Board, composed of representatives 
from the Township Boards, the duty of which should be 
to appoint a superintendent who should be responsible 
to it for the proper discharge of the duties of his office. 
And at the head of all, a State Board of Education, having 
general supervision of the whole system. Substantially, 
this ii> the system under which the States making 
greatest progress in educational affairs are working. 
Such a system provides for effective administrative force 
and for thorough supervision of school work at every 
point. 

The Ohio Teachers' Association embraces in its 
membership a public-spirited and zealous class of work- 
ers. It is a large force in shaping opinion on educational 
matters, and is of the utmost benefit to the profession 
of teaching, and, through that profession, to the State at 
large. 

All the multiform questions pertaining to education 
are discussed in its meetings by our ablest educators. 
The annual meeting held at Sandusky, last July, was 



STATE SCHOOL COMMISSIONER. 49 

noted for the unusual excellence of the papers read and 
the discussions thereon. 

A comparatively new organization, the State Associa- 
tion of Examiners, is also exercising a direct and health- 
ful influence over the school work." 

The Report for 1889 enlarges on the suggestions 
made the year before. Perhaps the most significant 
passage in the Report is that which endorses the law for 
compulsory education, a measure urged by Mr. Hancock 
as long ago as 1870, when he was Superintendent of the 
Schools of Cincinnati. He says, ''The most striking 
advanced step in school legislation made in Ohio, within 
the last quarter of a century, was the enactment, last 
winter, of the Compulsory Education Law." His com- 
ments on this topic are followed by a clear and vigorous 
discussion of the several subjects : Organization of the 
School System ; Supervision ; Permanency of the 
Teacher's Position ; Examination of Teachers ; Training 
Teachers; Teachers' Associations; Continuance of 
Schools ; State Board of Examiners ; Manual Training. 
It would be difficult to find sounder or more sensibly 
expressed views on the examination and training of 
teachers, than those laid down in Dr. Hancock's Report 
of 1889, — the views of a thoughtful educator given 
deliberately, after mature reflection corrected by obser- 
vation and experience. The Report for 1890, — Dr. 
Hancock's last, — begins with a brief essay on Higher 
Education, and this is followed by the topics. College 
Statistics ; High Schools ; Number of Pupils in the Public 
Schools; School Houses; The Compulsory Law; County 
Boards of Examiners, etc. 

To the Report for 1889 are appended the Compulsory 
Law, the noted School Book Law, and other additions 



50 JOHN HANCOCK. 

and amendments to the School Laws of Ohio passed by 
the Sixty-ninth General Assembly ; and, to that of 1890, 
Dr. E. E. White's Plans of Adjusting High School and 
College Courses of Study in Ohio ; and other matter. 

These Annual Reports, though they represent a vast 
deal of painstaking labor, and indicate the scope and 
character of the office duties devolved upon the Commis- 
sioner by the issues of the times, do not acquaint us 
fully with the tasks and responsibilities of his onerous 
position. It was said of Dr. Hancock, in a prominent 
print, that '*he was probably the most competent and 
successful, as well as the most popular. Commissioner of 
Common Schools Ohio has ever possessed. It is doubt- 
ful whether any other man in the State had the knowl- 
edge of the theory and practice of the Public School 
System of the State which he possessed." This may be 
an exaggerated statement, yet certainly no prominent 
educator will deny that the right man was in the right 
place when John Hancock entered the State-house as 
head of the department of Public Schools. His fitness, 
and the recognition of it, by State officers, teachers and 
people, entailed on him an enormous amount of work that 
a less prominent and popular incumbent might have 
escaped. A thousand demands were made upon his time 
and strength. The body of his correspondence was 
necessarily increased. The drains upon his social and 
his literary resources were numerous. If he had been 
overtaxed by duties at Chillicothe, the demands of his 
new position at Columbus were no less exacting. Far 
from being a sinecure, the Commissioner's office, with its 
disgracefully meager salary, proved to him, though a 
seat of honor, a post of responsibility, care and never- 
ending activity. To his successor in Chillicothe he 



STATE SCHOOL COMMISSIONER. 51 

wrote, February 12, 1890, "I appreciate what you say 
as to leisure being an important factor of a full life. But 
how are you going to get any considerable amount of it 
when you have any number of friends pushing at your 
back and yelling in your ears : * Don't stop ! go ahead ! 
Do ! Do !' (I don't know whether those d's ought to be 
capitals or not.) So, in consequence of this shoving 
process I had to work right along — all the time I had la 
grippe — writing up my report, — which is now, thank 
fortune, in the hands of the printer. * * * I do not find 
time to read anything in the literary line. I am drying 
up to such an extent that I am expecting soon to hear 
my brains rattle in my skull as I walk. * * ^ Would 
you wonder if I sometimes felt tired ? Yet, when I am 
entirely well, I do not." On May 13, 1890, he wrote to 
the same correspondent, **I tire of these skirmishing 
expeditions among country schools, but haven't the 
moral heroism to refuse invitations." And again, in 
November, 1890, " I am induced to think this office holds 
one up to routine with a firmer grasp than does the work 
of Superintendent of Schools. It is only by a wrenching 
process that I can get away from it to write a friendly 
letter." 

And again, in December of the same year, "Last 
evening I wrote the final sentence of my Report, and 
what a relief it was ! But the relief would be greater 
were it not that I must plunge into work immediately 
on the Report of the School Book Board (confound its 
'picture'!) for the meeting of the General Assembly. 
I should like to present in that about all the facts in 
regard to the making of text-books that can be procured, 
so ,that if the Legislature should wish to take further 
action in the matter, it may do so with some intelli- 



52 JOHN HANCOCK. 

gence. So I see nothing but hard work before me for 
the next two months ; but you know I am getting used 
to that." In a similar strain of mingled weariness and 
energy, Dr. Hancock sent out his occasional greeting to 
other friends, — half apologizing for his enforced neglect 
of social recreations. To the recorder of these lines he 
wrote " I spend most of my waking hours in a cell of 
the stone jail called a State House." The genial tone, 
and the irresistible tendency to relieve the pressure of 
serious business by the buoyant counter-force of mirth 
and humor, remained with him to the end. One of his 
letters, dashed off in a rollicking mood, in November 
1890, closes with this droll piece of self-burlesque: *M 
am engaged in writing up my Annual Report. Wait till 
you get that, ' me boy!' There you will fmd excellence 
blooming ! There you will fmd thoughts as large as 
California pumpkins ! There you will fmd strength and 
delicacy of style and refinement of sentiment ! There 
you will find, you will fmd — Hancock, John. (I can 
throw off that kind of humor all day with one hand tied 
behind me.) 

Please to make my graceful bow to the Madame and 
to each and every of the scions of a noble house. 

And believe me — although a partially forlorn and 
shipwrecked brother — 

Yours always, 

Hancock John." 

connection with the ohio teachers' association. 

Dr. Hancock joined the Ohio Teachers' Association 
at its fourth annual session in 1852, and from that date 
to 1890, inclusive, attended all its meetings except two. 



OHIO TEACHERS' ASSOCIATION. 53 

At the sixth annual meeting, in Columbus, December 
28, 29, 30, 1853, he was Secretary pro tern. Joseph Ray, 
the mathematician, then Principal of Woodward High 
School, Cincinnati, was President of the Association ; 
and among those in attendance were Lorin Andrews, 
Alfred Holbrook, Wm. D. Henkle, E. E. White, Dr. Cal- 
vin Cutter, the physiologist, and Alphonzo Wood, the 
botanist. Horace Mann delivered the annual address. 
The meeting was held in the old City Hall. Dr. Find- 
ley, alluding to this occasion as being the first on which 
he met Hancock, says, *'He was in the ante-room, wait- 
ing, with considerable perturbation, as I remember, to be 
called to read what was probably his first paper before 
the Association." The subject of this paper was the 
"Position and Duties of Teachers." 

The seventh annual meeting of the Association con- 
vened at Cincinnati, and Mr. Hancock, being the regular 
Secretary, had much to do with the business. The Min- 
utes record that, on behalf of the teachers and trustees 
of the Public Schools of Cincinnati, he invited the mem- 
bers to attend a festival at Greenwood Hall, in the 
Mechanics' Institute Building. 

In the meeting of 1855, held at Columbus, Hancock 
was very active, especially in the advocacy of State 
legislation and support for Normal Schools. He was one 
of the earliest friends of the Hopedale Normal School 
and its founders, and one of the organizers of the South- 
western State Normal School Association, formed at 
Oxford, Ohio, in August, 1855, under the auspices of 
which the South-Western State Normal School, now 
Normal University, was started, at Lebanon, November 
17, 1855, under the control of Alfred Holbrook. We find 
Hancock supporting a resolution, offered by Holbrook, in 



54 JOHN HANCOCK. 

favor of Normal Schools. He was chosen Chairman of 
the Executive Committee, an office which he held for 
several years. 

At the tenth annual meeting, Columbus, December 
29, 1857, Hancock made himself felt as a vigorous force, 
participating in all the debates. The record tells that 
he moved that the report of James A. Garfield, on the 
"Self-reporting System," be taken up. This was a time 
in which Horace Mann, by his eloquent insistency on the 
moral correctness of the ''Code of Honor," or self- 
reporting, as practiced at Antioch College, had created 
an intense general interest in the subject. The discus- 
sion, a very radical and stimulating one, was resumed 
by the State Association, in 1858, at the meeting held 
in Delaware. Mr. Hancock opposed the ''Self-reporting 
System," on the ground that it provokes pupils to 
falsehood. 

The meeting of 1859 was held in Dayton, July 6 
and 7, and the President, Mr. Cowdery, being absent, 
Mr. Hancock, Vice-President, occupied the chair during 
its sessions. He delivered an address on the "Diffusion 
of Knowledge," which was published in the Ohio School 
Journal of November, 1859. The Association promoted 
him to the presidency of their body in 1859; and, at the 
next meeting, the twelfth annual, held at Newark, he 
delivered an able inaugural, which may be read in the 
School Journal for August, i860. This address is in its 
author's best vein, — a characteristic discussion of the 
educational topics of the day. It derives special historic 
interest from a passage eulogizing Horace Mann, who 
died at Yellow Springs, August 2, 1859. From the beau- 
tiful tribute which Hancock paid to the famous educator, 
I quote a few sentences : " Terribly in earnest, he worked 



OHIO TEACHERS* ASSOCIATION. 55 

with terrible and unsparing energy, and fell, as every 
true warrior would wish to fall, with his armor on. His 
ideal of manhood was a grand and noble one, and he 
endeavored to live it in his own person. None has ever 
set forth its beauties in more eloquent terms, or succeeded 
better in implanting in the hearts of young men a desire 
to rise into the regions of a pure and ennobled activity. 
The greatest educator the New World has produced, his 
influence on American instruction will last while time 
endures.'* 

To give, in detail, the history of Dr. Hancock's 
participation in the proceedings of the Ohio Teachers' 
Association-, for the forty years in which he was a 
prominent and always active member of it, would require 
a small volume. Of the many papers which he read 
before it, mention may be made of that on ''The High 
School Question," 1874; that on "What Studies should 
be Required below the High School," 1878; and that on 
**The Examination of Teachers," read at Akron, in 1887. 
At the Toledo meeting of 1889, he responded to the 
Mayor's speech of greeting, and read a noble and 
generous tribute to his friend and predecessor. Commis- 
sioner Eli Todd Tappan. The part he took in the 
meeting at Lakeside, in July, 1890,— the last State 
Convention he was permitted to attend, — was varied 
and energetic. Scarcely a paper was presented for 
public consideration, that he did not discuss with wise 
and discriminating judgment, yet with the ardor and 
enthusiasm of earnest conviction. He spoke with the 
confidence of a veteran who had passed through every 
experience that the field of common school education 
can afford, from subordinate teacher in a district school 
to State School Commissioner. But not an arrogant 



56 JOHN HANCOCK. 

word, not a presumptuous syllable, escaped his lips during 
those three genial days, July i, 2 and 3, in which he 
moved among his fellow teachers, conscious indeed of his 
right and duty to counsel and advise ; not so much by 
virtue of his office, as from a perfect knowledge of the 
problems in discussion, and an absolute devotion to the 
best interests of the commonwealth in matters educa- 
tional. There was no slightest indication of break or 
decay of body or mind in what he did or said, in those 
his last days of mingling, as it proved, with his 
co-workers in the familiar old Association, endeared by 
so many years of memory. Commenting on Mr. Jack- 
son's paper on "The Use and Abuse of Methods," he 
remarked, how forcibly, and with what truth of truth: 
''Nobody can make anything out of a method unless 
he sees whither that method tends, and recognizes that 
there is a spirit in the child that must be touched and 
reached by the method. But if he will recognize that 
we are striving to reach the soul of the boy or the girl 
and stir it as it has never been stirred before, then his 
method is a good one. That is the way all the great 
teachers have done. Our pupils go through the Normal 
Schools and they learn methods, but in the end they are 
entirely mechanical, because the teachers fail to recognize 
whither they all tend." 

Again, in discussing Mr. Baker's paper on "The 
Value of a Library in Connection with School Work," 
how animated and suggestive his little off-hand speech ! 
"This is an old, old story for me to talk upon," he 
began. " There is a problem connected with this teach- 
ing of literature that is not yet by any means solved, and 
it is, How shall they (to use Carlyle's expression) give 
warmth who have no live coal in their own bosoms ? 



OHIO TEACHERS' ASSOCIATION. 57 

The gentleman before me spoke of the difficulty of 
teaching literature to classes, some members of which 
have never read a book. There are plenty of teachers 
in Ohio that have never read a book. They are found 
in every county of the State. Now how shall they give 
instruction in literature ? How shall they make literature 
attractive to those who have not any natural taste for it ? 
There are always in every class some who inherit a love 
for books. It is a love that never ceases, constantly 
reaching out for more in that direction. You do not need 
to give them any attention, except to direct that love 
to proper objects. But the majority in the classes in 
schools are not of that character. They have not that 
inherent love for the masterpieces of literature. They 
have no love for art. They can not see nature. ' How 
shall we give them that love, unless we have something 
of it ourselves ? We must begin solving this problem 
at the teachers' end of it. We can not solve it by 
going to the pupils. I am discouraged when I see the 
amount of ignorance among teachers in this respect. 
Of course, there are none of that class of teachers in 
this Association. They do not go to Associations; they 
do not go to Institutes. They live in secluded places, 
perhaps, and yet I could tell of incidents in my own 
experience, as a member of a Board of Examiners, where 
one of the teachers in one of the principal cities of Ohio 
could not answer a single one of my questions in English 
literature. I asked him questions in general history, and the 
past might never have been, so far as he was concerned. 
But there is a vast improvement being made, and you 
will not find such men any longer in the schools of Ohio. 
I find now young men and young women everywhere 
who are enthusiastic in this. They may not have read 



58 JOHN HANCOCK. 

much, but they have caught the sweet infection of 
knowledge and they are going to do something, not alone 
for themselves, — but they are going to do for those they 
are called upon to instruct, — and we shall have built up 
in this State of ours a little mountain upon which shall 
be a shining light to all around, and Ve are going to 
have that to-morrow." 

The words which I have quoted, on a favorite 
topic of his, were among the last uttered by Dr. Han- 
cock before the Ohio Teachers' Association. It was 
set for him to appear on the program of 1 891, at Chau- 
tauqua, and he was to open the discussion on the ques- 
tion, '' What Further Work is there for the State Associ- 
ation ?" He fell at his post of duty a month before the 
Chautauqua meeting convened. The last work that he 
could do for the Association, and for the cause of educa- 
tion, was to die in the service. 

THE OHIO TEACHERS' READING CIRCLE. 

Closely related to the State Association, if not an 
integral part of it, is the Ohio Teachers' Reading Circle, 
organized by members of the Association at Chautau- 
qua, July 3, 1883, mainly by the exertions of Mrs. Delia 
Lathrop Williams, of Delaware, Ohio, who has ever 
since been at the head of its Board of Control. Mrs. 
Williams prepared the original report or plan upon which 
the Circle was organized, being chairman of a Committee 
of three to which the drafting of the report was en- 
trusted. The two other members of the Committee 
were Dr. John Hancock and Hon. J. J. Burns. 

The zeal for culture which impelled Dr. Hancock to 
cooperate in the founding of the Reading Circle, kept 



THE OHIO TEACHERS' READING CIRCLE. 59 

alive his interest in its growth and prosperity. An ever 
active member of its Board of Control, he employed every 
means within his reach to encourage and assist its ben- 
eficent operation. Indeed he took the liveliest satisfac- 
tion in the contemplation of its manifest good results, 
for if he had a *' hobby," it was literature and reading. 
To the direct influence of the pedagogical department in 
the course of reading of the Circle, he ascribed a 
marked improvement, noticeable by the State Board of 
Examiners, in the qualifications of applicants for certifi- 
cates. Discussing the value of libraries as an educa- 
tional means, at the meeting of the State Association in 
1890, he said, ''If there is any one thing above another 
that I am specially proud of besides the Truant Law, it is 
that in Ohio has originated the idea of having a great 
Reading Circle that shall bring within its bounds hundreds 
and thousands of teachers, so that they are beginning to 
taste more of the sweets of literature. We must 
encourage this reading among teachers themselves. Get 
into their hands the best books, and get into their hearts 
the love for them, and the remainder of the problem 
will be very easy. Inspiration will go out of every pore 
of them, as it were, and we shall gradually uplift the 
communities of this State and spread abroad this in- 
fluence from Ohio, as a central State, all over this Union. 
Every one of us, to bring' this about, is to do as the 
young gentleman has been doing in his High School, and 
this lady who read the paper. Let us do this sort of 
work, and we can accomplish any purpose which we 
undertake." 

It was in furtherance of the higher objects of the 
Reading Circle, that Dr. Hancock was induced, in 1886, 
to prepare a booklet of ** Selections from Wordsworth, 



6o JOHN HANCOCK, 

with a Brief Sketch of his Life," his only venture in 
authorship, aside from strictly professional Reports and the 
like. The ''Selections," published by Robert Clarke & 
Co., Cincinnati, 1886, formed part of the literary course 
for the years 1886-7. The introductory ''sketch " is an 
admirably clear account of Wordsworth, with a critical 
estimate of his theory and practice of poetry. The 
dozen selections which follow, covering some thirty 
pages, are of the noblest strain, beginning with the mag- 
nificent Ode on Immortality, and closing with the great 
Sonnet on Milton. 

SERVICES IN THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION. 

The loving esteem in which Dr. Hancock was held by 
his fellow members in the National Educational Associa- 
tion, the Council, and the Round Table, is attested by the 
report of the action of the Memorial meeting of the 
Council, July 10, 1891, at Toronto, which is appended to 
this Memoir. 

Dr. Hancock became a member of the National Asso- 
ciation at its second annual meeting held in Cincinnati, 
at Smith & Nixon's Hall, beginning July 11, 1858. Dr. 
Z. Richards was President of the Association in that year, 
and was succeeded by A. J. Rickoff. In 1871, Dr. Han- 
cock was chosen Treasurer of the Association, for the 
term of four years. He became a life member in 1876. 
He was elected President at the Louisville meeting in 
1877. The Association held no meeting in 1878, and 
hence Dr. Hancock did not serve until the Philadelphia 
meeting, 1879, over which he presided with great accep- 
tance. 

He was one of the original merfibers of the National 



SERVICES IN THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION. 6l 

Council, being present at its organization at Chautauqua, 
in 1880. 

Dr. Hancock was a regular attendant upon the meet- 
ings of these organizations, and an active participant in 
their work. Among the contributions which he made to 
the National literature of education, may be mentioned 
his inaugural address at Philadelphia, in 1879; a paper 
on ** School Supervision in the United States Compared 
with Supervision in Other Countries," read at Chicago, 
in 1887; ^ ** Tribute to Dr. E. T. Tappan," delivered in 
1889, at Nashville, and a paper on ** Coeducation," 
given at St. Paul, in 1891. 

Another rather informal, yet by no means unimpor- 
tant, educational junto to which Dr. Hancock belonged, 
was that known as the Round Table, of which, one of 
the members. Dr. Rickoff, furnishes a brief account. He 
says: ** While Mr. Hancock was Superintendent of the 
Cincinnati Schools, the Round Table Convention was 
first assembled. It was mainly through the active inter- 
est of Dr. W. T. Harris, then Superintendent of the 
Schools of St. Louis, that Mr. Hancock, Mr. Pickard, of 
Chicago, and I (then of Cleveland) were called together 
annually in the fall to discuss the problems of adminis- 
tration which particularly affected the larger cities in 
which we were severally interested. We had no 
Constitution and no officers, but engaging a parlor in the 
hotel in which we had agreed to meet, we were accus- 
tomed to spend the greater part of the day and all the 
evening — sometimes till late at night for two or three 
successive days — in discussing principles of education ; 
methods of teaching ; organization and seating of classes ; 
the best nomenclature for the several grades ; the 
influence of parochial schools ; the best method of regu- 



62 JOHN HANCOCK. 

lating the salaries of teachers ; the building of school- 
houses; plans of ventilation, etc., etc. In fact no subject 
pertaining to the organization or management of schools 
was ever considered as foreign to the legitimate purposes 
of our. Convention. Mr. Stevenson, of Columbus, and 
Mr. Shortridge, of Indianapolis, sometimes joined us, but 
they were not so regular in attendance as the rest of us. 
Mr. Hancock and Mr. Harris were most valuable mem- 
bers. They were the readiest to raise questions for con- 
sideration, and most interesting and instructive in their 
discussion. Though it called together so few, and though 
its proceedings were never reported to the press, the 
influence of this Association over the schools of the West 
has been said to have been valuable : certainly it was 
not without great advantage to those who attended, and 
to the school systems which they represented. It was 
our rule to spend the morning of each day in visiting the 
schools of the city where we met. Thus, each one had 
an opportunity to study the work done by the others, and 
substantial uniformity was the result. The united 
influence of the larger cities doubtless produced a good 
degree of uniformity in the smaller ones, and in this way 
perhaps the good results did not stop with the schools of 
which we had charge." 

DR. HANCOCK'S WRITINGS FOR EDUCATIONAL JOURNALS, 
AS EDITOR OR CONTRIBUTOR. 

The Ohio School Journal — now The Ohio Educa- 
tional Monthly and National Teacher — was, perhaps, 
the first educational publication for which Mr. Hancock 
wrote. This well known periodical was started in 1852, 
and of the forty volumes which have been issued, there 



AS EDITOR OR CONTRIBUTOR. 63 

is not one that does not mention the name of John 
Hancock; and many of its pages are occupied with 
matter from his prolific pen. Besides numerous addresses, 
papers and reports of his, forming part of the proceedings 
of the State Teachers' Association, or of other public 
educational bodies, the Journal contains many contribu- 
tions sent by him, from time to time, on subjects mainly 
professional. In March, 1856, was published in the 
columns of the Journal an article entitled, '^The Present 
Condition of Education." This was followed, in 1857, 
by an article on "New Methods." The July number 
of Volume VII., 1858, contains a very interesting paper 
by Mr. Hancock called, ''Free Books," describing the 
Public Library of Cincinnati, and closing with the 
sentence: ''Free Schools and Free Books are the two 
premises of a syllogism, and a Free People the inevitable 
conclusion." The June number of Volume VIII., 1859, 
preserves one of his humorous productions, a rollicking 
piece, of four pages, entitled, "Not an Article," a defense 
of mirth and laughter in general, and enjoining pleasantry 
upon the schoolmaster as a duty. This was a string 
upon which Hancock was wont to play most musically. 
He was fond of a joke, and always jocular. One of his 
whimsical proposals, often announced with much solemn- 
ity, was to prepare a " Book of Conundrums and Funny 
Jests, for use in the Common Schools," with a " Key," 
by means of which the unwittiest teacher might explain 
the obscurest points in the jokes ! 

The Educational Monthly for May, i860, prints an 
article from Hancock, bearing the title " Our Homes," a 
plea for house decoration; and the December number 
has a noble and eloquent contribution from the same 
source, headed, " Will it Pay.?" The question is applied 



64 JOHN HANCOCK. 

to the public school system, and demonstrates the weak- 
ness of a parsimonious policy in school affairs, and shows 
conclusively how inestimable to the State is the value 
of education and culture. 

In January, i860, Mr. Elias Longley, of Cincinnati, 
began the publication of the Journal of Progress in 
Education and Social Improvement, a monthly journal, 
of which Hancock became chief editor, without relin- 
quishing any of his duties as Principal of the First 
Intermediate School. The Journal of Progress was, 
as its name would suggest, a wide-awake and lively 
periodical, though short-lived, for it was abandoned in 
September, 1861, on account of business disturbances 
caused by the Civil War. The subscription list was 
transferred to the books of the Ohio Educational 
Monthly, then published at Columbus, by E. E. White 
and Rev. Anson Smyth. 

The Journal had a Phonetic Department, in the 
interest of the publisher, and a Mathematical Depart- 
ment, conducted by W. D. Henkle, at that time Professor 
of Mathematics in the Normal School at Lebanon, Ohio. 
Among the leading contributors to the periodical were : 
A. J. Rickoff, Principal of Cincinnati Boys' Academy ; 
E. E. White, late of the Portsmouth, Ohio, Union Schools ; 
Thomas W. Harvey, of Painesville ; Charles S. Royce, 
of Norwalk; R. W. Stevenson, Superintendent Public 
Schools, Norwalk; Edwin Regal, of Hopedale Normal 
School ; Dr. I. J. Allen, Superintendent of Public Schools, 
Cincinnati ; A. Schuyler, Principal of Seneca County 
Academy; Mason D. Parker, Principal Second Inter- 
mediate School, Cincinnati; Rev. Robert Allyn, Presi- 
dent of the Weslyan Female College, Cincinnati; Wm. 
E. Crosby, Principal of the Sixth District School, Cincin- 



AS EDITOR OR CONTRIBUTOR. 65 

nati ; Daniel Hough, Principal of the First District School, 
Cincinnati; Lucius A. Hine, Author of ** Political and 
Social Economy," Loveland, Ohio, and W. H. Venable, 
Teacher in Lebanon Normal School. 

Mr. Hancock's buoyant and ambitious energy brought 
to the editorial department of the Journal of Progress, 
monthly, a variety of reading matter remarkable for 
quantity and quality. He wrote with evident enjoy- 
ment, and with more care and precision, perhaps, than 
he ever used before or after those years of special pains- 
taking. Every issue of the Journal contained from 
four to six double column pages of closely printed text 
from his hand. Besides a multitude of minor articles, 
book notices, personal items, and scraps of restated vital 
news, he prepared regularly a series of keen and thought- 
ful leaders on such subjects as, ** Teachers and Educa- 
tional Journals," ** Intellectual Culture," *' Boston Read- 
ing Books," "Self-made Men," ** Learned Men," "What 
Knowledge is of Most Worth." In a business para- 
graph headed "A Word to Our Friends," he outlines 
the intended character of his magazine. He says, "If 
our Journal has in any way approached a realization 
of our design, it has, in some measure, made itself the 
representative of living, practical thought, in the wide 
field of popular education, rather than of dry, pedantic 
forms. * * Hi * Wherever you find a real live 
teacher or friend of education, who does his own think- 
ing, and who is interested in the live thoughts of others 
of his brethren, show him our Journal and ask him 
to try it if but for six months. Pass by the old fogy 
school' keepers, — ^they will not be interested." 

The questions brought to issue by the breaking out of 
the Civil War were immediately taken up and discussed 



66 JOHN HANCOCK. 

by him whose name was the same as that of the first 
signer of the Declaration of Independence. No hesita- 
tion about John Hancock in such a crisis. Sumter was 
bombarded April 12, 1861 ; the May number of the 
Journal says, in its first editorial : '* Since the bombard- 
ment of Fort Sumter, our people have been breathing 
nothing but pure oxygen. The adult pulse has beat a 
hundred to the minute ; that of the boys and girls, too 
rapidly to be computed. Patriotism is catching, and the 
editor has not entirely escaped the contagion. What 
with flag-raisings, school-teaching during 'the day, and 
military drill each night, he has been obliged to forego 
pen-work. He believes, whatever may be the final 
result, he and his fellow citizens generally will be the 
better for this present storm. They will have learned and 
felt what true patriotism is. Never have our people before 
felt how dear the old flag, under which they have so long 
lived and enjoyed the blessing of liberty, really was." 
From the time of this writing forward, the war-spirit 
dominated the editorial department of the Journal of 
Progress. We find in its pages the captions, * 'Patriot- 
ism in Educational Institutions," ** President Lorin 
Andrews a Captain," **A Visit to Camp Dennison," 
''Teachers' Rifle Company," "Patriotism and the 
Teachers, " ' ' What are We Fighting For ? ' ' Doubtless 
the belligerent tone of the magazine wrought some 
disturbance in its subscription list. That such was the 
case is testified by the following epistle and comment 
which appeared in the editorial department for August, 
1861, under the title " A Model Letter." 



AS EDITOR OR CONTRIBUTOR. 67 

"* August i8th, 1861. 
MR. EDITOR :— Will you please not to send me any more of 
your Journals of Progress for I will not receive no more it does not 
fill the Bill I did not subscribe for a Political Paper. I will not read 
any such a thing. JOSEPH W. CLAXON.' 

This specimen of schoolmaster literature, which 
we give verbatim et literatim et punctuatim, must 
be from a regular *Secesher.' We are exceedingly 
sorry we can not reproduce for our readers Mr. 
Claxon's very unique chirography— there is nothing like 
it in Spencer's Book of Specimens. We also regret that 
our anti-political friend has not informed the world where 
he lives. Such a bright and shining light ought not to 
be hid under a bushel. We don't think, however, that 
much learning has made him mad. — J. H." 

During his connection with Nelson's Commercial Col- 
lege, in 1865-6, Mr. Hancock was one of the editors of a 
paper called The News and Educator, published by 
Richard Nelson, in Cincinnati. The form and name of 
this paper were changed in 1867, when it was published 
by R. W. Carroll & Co., as The Educational Times: 
An American Monthly Magazine of Literature and 
Education. Of this, W. D. Henkle wrote in 1876, 
**Mr. Hancock edited the first number, and introduced it 
with his Valedictory." 

The editorial diversions of Mr. Hancock of which I 
have just written, did not alienate his affections from 
the Ohio Educational Monthly, nor prevent him from 
contributing frequently to that recognized organ of the 
State Teachers' Association. Articles from his pen are 
to be found in almost every volume of the Monthly down 
to the year of his death. Some of the most important 
of these are here mentioned, with date of publication, for 



68 JOHN HANCOCK. 

the convenience of any who may wish to refer to 
them: "Some Hobbies and their Riders," December, 
1861, a humorous ** take-off" on certain classes of 
pedagogues; "Sketch of Cyrus Knowlton, Principal of 
Hughes High School, Cincinnati," March, 1862; 
"Language Lessons in the Cincinnati Schools," July, 
1871 ; "New Methods of Instruction," February, 
1874; "The High School Question," August, 1874; 
"Classification of Pupils," July 1881 ; "Help for the 
Needy," an argument in favor of National aid for 
Southern Schools, February, 1885. 

In the years 1879, 1880, Dr. Hancock assisted W. D. 
Henkle, by supplying many paragraphs to the editorial 
department known as the " Contributors' Club," a very 
lively and original feature of the Monthly. The contri- 
butions of Dr. Hancock are signed either X, Y, or Z. 
When, in the years 1884-5, Dr. Findley, by means of 
an admirable series of "Symposia," brought together 
the succinct opinion of the leading educators of the 
State of Ohio on several vital subjects, such as School 
Examinations, County Institutes, and Country Schools, 
Dr. Hancock gave his views, in every "Symposium," 
with his usual positiveness and power. In regard to 
school examinations he said: "Questions should, so 
far as practicable, always be such as will exercise the 
reasoning powers of the pupils. The demand of an 
examination of this kind can not be met by cramming, 
however ingenious." Of County Institutes, he declared 
the main purpose to be "instruction in teaching and 
governing a school. All the work should be incidental 
and subsidiary to this purpose. The managers of an 
Institute, who make instruction in the several branches 
taught in our schools a leading feature, make a grave 



WRITINGS AND ADDRESSES. 69 

mistake. * * * * It is essential, too, tiiat instructors in 
Institutes should be possessed of wisdom, entliusiasm, 
and skill, — be awake themselves, and have the ability 
to keep others awake." 

Dr. Hancock's last contribution to the Monthly was, 
I believe, one which appeared in June, 1888, on " The 
First Normal School in Ohio." The article is of much 
historic value; it preserves many important facts 
respecting the Normal School at Hopedale and its 
founders, and pays a merited tribute especially to Jane 
Donaldson McNeely. The writer of this Memoir recalls 
that, on the last occasion on which he met Dr. 
Hancock, — it was at a Teachers' Institute held in August, 
1890, at Jewett, Harrison County, Ohio, — the Commis- 
sioner, then on his official visit to that part of the State, 
delivered a spontaneous and most moving eulogy on the 
life and services of Cyrus McNeely, who had recently 
died at Hopedale. 

Though the Educational Monthly was, naturally, the 
principal vehicle by which Dr. Hancock delivered his 
written ideas to readers, it was by no means the only 
publication for which he wrote. He responded to many 
calls for contributions to various newspapers and educa- 
tional periodicals in different parts of the United States. 
For many years his name stood in the list of associate 
editors of Intelligence, the brilliant and aggressive 
educational journal conducted by E. O. Vaile, in Chicago. 

WRITINGS AND ADDRESSES. 

Besides his Reports as Superintendent in Cincinnati, 
Dayton and Chillicothe, and as State School Commis- 
sioner, nearly thirty in all, and the many professional 



70 JOHN HANCOCK. 

papers he prepared for County, State and National asso- 
ciations of teachers, Dr. Hancock wrote innumerable 
essays for literary societies, teachers' institutes, and 
educational journals, and speeches or lectures for delivery 
before popular audiences. He began to practice literary 
composition as early, at least, as 1850, and kept up the 
habit to the last day of his life. I have made mention 
of the essays that he read at the Lyceum in Mr. Rickoff's 
Academy, and those read before the Cincinnati Literary 
Club, and also of his principal contributions to the Ohio 
Educational Monthly, and to the proceedings of the State 
Association. Some of his material was, of course, 
worked over for more than one occasion, but the quan- 
tity of original and unrepeated mental work is remark- 
able. The large pile of unpublished manuscripts which 
he left represents but a small fraction of the entire product 
of his pen. There are those of his friends who will read 
with interest the titles of his most significant pieces. 

One of his early lectures, "The True Man," was 
first read about the year 1855, before the Clermont 
County Institute, Batavia, Ohio. This furnished the 
foundation of the more elaborate lecture called "The 
Common Man." Another early effort was an address 
on "The Schoolmaster as Seen in Literature," and 
another, belonging to the same period, is entitled " Talk," 
a witty and suggestive discussion on the uses and abuses 
of conversation, and on the famous conversational- 
ists, Coleridge, Macaulay, Carlyle and others. In 1866, 
Mr. Hancock prepared a vigorous discourse on " Lectures 
and Lecturers," and delivered it for the first time at 
Lawrenceburg, Indiana. In July, 1876, he read, at 
Glasgow, Kentucky, before the Kentucky State Asso- 
ciation, an exhaustive paper on "Graded Schools," 



AS AN INSTITUTE WORKER. 71 

which was printed in Morton's Home and School, and 
reproduced by Dr. Henderson, in his State Report of 
the Kentucky Schools. In 1878, June 6, he gave an 
address entitled, "What Shall Our Education Be?" on 
the occasion of the High School Commencement, at 
Eaton, Ohio, on the invitation of Superintendent Le Roy 
Brown. Before the Central Ohio Teachers' Association, 
at a meeting held in Dayton, November, 1884, Dr. 
Hancock read a luminous paper on ''What Shall 
be Done for Our Bright Pupils?" This was pub- 
lished in the Dayton Journal of November 11, 1884. In 
the summer of 1885, Dr. Hancock delivered, before the 
professors and students of Ohio University, a carefully 
finished and most scholarly oration on '' The Uses of the 
Higher Education." Perhaps his most ambitious, purely 
literary discourses are those on "Shakespeare," and on 
"The Study of Literature." To conclude this partial 
list of his incidental and general written and spoken 
performances, we record that, on Memorial Day, in June, 
1887, Dr. Hancock delivered, at Soldiers' Circle, in the 
Eastern grave yard of Chillicothe, an address and eulogy 
on the " Common Soldier," an eloquent utterance which 
was printed in the Chillicothe Advertiser of June 3, 1887. 

AS AN INSTITUTE WORKER. 

Dr. Hancock was always in demand as an agreeable 
and efficient worker in teachers' institutes. We have 
seen that he was a leading spirit in organizing the 
Clermont County Teachers' Association, in 1848. In 
August, 1858, he gave courses of lectures before the 
students of the Lebanon, Ohio, Normal School, on 
Grammar, and on Esthetics. He attended institutes 



72 JOHN HANCOCK. 

in most of the counties of Ohio, and in many places out 
of his native State. 

A pleasant anecdote illustrating Dr. Hancock's tact 
and good humor as an institute instructor is furnished 
me by Mr. W. C. Washburne, Principal of the Twenty- 
sixth District and Intermediate School, of Cincinnati. 
Mr. Washburn writes: 

'' It was my pleasure and profit to be a minor 
instructor in a Teachers' Institute in an Indiana county, 
years ago, in which for the same week Dr. Hancock was 
chief instructor. An incident occurred one afternoon 
which illustrates the plain, unostentatious character of 
the man, as well as the fine grain of humor which 
always ran through his speech. The week was an 
unusually torrid one in the middle of August, and two 
or three hundred teachers and visitors filled the hall ; in 
the construction of which all means of ventilation had 
been certainly ignored. On the afternoon in question, 
just before the close of the day's session, one of the 
* critics ' for the day, a young miss, evidently well 
satisfied with herself, in making her report said, * One 
of the Professors in speaking to-day used the word 
*' sweat;" I think he should have said ** perspire." ' 
Upon her resuming her seat, Mr. Hancock, not then 
known as ' Dr.', arose, and with that sly twinkle of the 
eye so natural to him, used almost exactly the following 
words : * I suspect I am the *' Professor" who offended in 
saying " sweat." At any rate I did say it, and conditions 
at any time this week would have justified me in doing 
so. Further, I meant ** sweat" for two reasons. It is a 
good, old Anglo-Saxon word, whereas "perspire" is an 
interloper, and I always prefer one of the former class 
if I can find one to suit. Besides, we perspire all the 



LABORS AS TRUSTEE OF OHIO UNIVERSITY. 73 

time, waking or sleeping, in summer or in winter ; would 
die if we couldn't. But with great drops of moisture 
dripping from every pore of my body, as was the case 
then, and is now, I know no other word so appropriate 
as "sweat." I still say '* sweat.' " And he sat down 
amid the laughing and applause of the suffering, sweating 
audience. It is needless to say that Mr. Hancock had no 
intention to wound the feelings of the young lady, but 
the lesson he thus administered to her doubtless saved 
her and others humiliation many times afterwards." 

LABORS AS TRUSTEE OF OHIO UNIVERSITY. 

Dr. Hancock, though emphatically a Common School 
man, jealously watchful over the interests of our public 
system, was never antagonistic to private schools, nor 
unappreciative of the high function of colleges. He once 
wrote, editorially, *' We have among our personal friends, 
teachers of private schools whose scholastic attainments, 
whose liberality and breadth of views, whose noble 
courtesy, and large-heartedness might well afford any 
parent, who should entrust a son or daughter to their 
charge, assurance that no pains would be spared in 
giving him or her such instruction as makes admirable 
men and women." 

The same editorial goes on to emphasize the fact 
that, "In the great educational work of our State, the 
teachers in our colleges and private schools have borne 
an active and honored part; and to them is Ohio 
indebted as much for her present stand in education as 
to the teachers in our public schools." 

With such sentiments and sympathies, it is not 
strange that Dr. Hancock was in cordial fellowship with 



74 JOHN HANCOCK. 

college men, and that he was taken into the councils of 
those who manage higher institutions of education, 
whether public or private. He was for about fourteen 
years a prominent member of the Board of Trustees of 
Ohio University, the oldest college in the State; or, 
indeed, within the region north-west of the Ohio River. 
The President of the University Dr. Charles W. Super, 
obligingly furnishes the following : 

** Dr. Hancock's appointment dated from 1877, and in 
the later years of his life I heard him speak more than 
once of the hopelessness of the outlook at that time and 
of the greatly improved prospect of this time-honored 
institution. When, about six years ago, the question of 
a State Normal Department began to be discussed, he 
gave himself heart and soul to the project. After the 
Legislature had made the first appropriation for this 
purpose, he rejoiced that he had been able to contribute 
something toward the better education of teachers in 
Ohio. He was particularly solicitous in behalf of those 
outside of the larger cities, for whom nothing had as yet 
been done in a systemetic way to better fit them for 
their profession. He keenly felt that in this regard 
Ohio, so progressive in most matters, should be so far 
behind nine-tenths of the States of the Union — Ohio, the 
land of his birth and the scene of his life's labors. 
There is no doubt that he would have been asked to take 
charge of the Department had it not become evident, 
before a formal tender of the Principalship was made, 
that the salary that could be paid at the start must, 
owing to the exigencies of the case, be less than he could 
afford to accept. During his fourteen years term of 
service he never, so far as I know, missed a meeting of 
the Board, and was a member of perhaps every impor- 



LABORS AS TRUSTEE OF OHIO UNIVERSITY. 75 

tant committee. He was always ready to aid with his 
tongue or his presence whenever others thought that he 
could be of service in either capacity. Such committee 
work was often quite laborious, as may well be imagined 
by those who have had a like experience. I recall that 
on one occasion when he, in company with several 
other trustees, had a hearing before the Finance Com- 
mittee of the Legislature, he said to another member of 
the Board, as we were coming down stairs, * The 
others simply asked for justice ; I begged for an appro- 
priation in view of the interests involved.' 

Yet he never lost hope that justice would ultimately 
be done the Ohio University, and that a good portion of 
the revenue of which it had been so unwisely and unright- 
eously deprived would ultimately be restored. It was 
this belief, joined to the wish to put normal instruction 
on a better footing in the State, or at least to make a 
beginning in this direction, that inspired his efforts and 
directed his energies as a member of the Board ; for he 
well knew that without a permanent endowment little or 
nothing could be done. Yet he was never dictatorial, 
and freely admitted that those most familiar with the 
local conditions should have the decisive word in every 
important measure, it is no disparagement to others 
who will take his place among us to say that the 
appointing power will not easily find another who will be 
equally zealous and equally well equipped for the kind of 
service here required. It is a matter of deep regret to 
every friend of the Ohio University that he was not 
permitted to witness the larger results of his labors 
which the next few years seem to promise." 



76 JOHN HANCOCK. 

A CHAMPION OF NORMAL SCHOOLS. 

Mention is made, on another page, of the fact that 
Dr. Hancock took a most active part in founding and 
sustaining the Normal School started by Cyrus 
McNeely, at Hopedale, and that built up by Alfred 
Holbrook, at Lebanon, Ohio. He held the position of 
Trustee in both these institutions, and was a life-long 
friend of each. 

The Cincinnati Normal School was organized un- 
der his administration as Superintendent of the City 
Schools, and he exerted all his influence to insure 
its success. The present Principal of the school, Mrs. 
Carrie Newhall Lathrop, in reponse to a note solicit- 
ing information on the subject says, "I can but give 
you his own words written to me at different times. 
He was one of the founders of the Cincinnati Normal 
School, and always its unsv/erving friend, his interest 
continuing to the day of his death. He wrote as follows: 
*I take an abiding interest in the Cincinnati Normal 
School. I think its establishment one of the best things 
ever done for the city schools. This school has infused 
into the methods of instruction new life and vigor.' 
And again, in that spirit of vigor and of manliness 
which caused him to regard willful ignorance as a crime, 
he wrote : * Narrow-minded educators are never truly in 
favor of Normal Schools. Such has been my observa- 
tion. Consistency forbids that they should be. The 
ablest and most er)lightened men of the Board are its 
friends; and intelligence, when backed by courage, 
always wins in the end.' '* 



DEATH AND BURIAL. 77 

OTHER OFFICES AND DIGNITIES. 

Besides holding high rank as Principal and Superin- 
tendent of City Schools, and memberships and offices in 
County, State and National educational bodies, and 
reaching the commanding position of State School Com- 
misioner. Dr. Hancock was the recipient of numerous 
other honors and distinctions bestowed on account of his 
merit and fidelity to public trust. He was a Trustee of 
the South-Wester n State Normal School, of the McNeely 
Normal School, and of the Ohio University. Dr. 
Tappan appointed him a member of the Ohio State 
Board of Examiners. The honorary degree of Master 
of Arts was conferred on him, in 1856, by Kenyon College, 
and the degree of Doctor of Philosophy was given him, 
in 1876, by the University of Wooster. 

DEATH AND BURIAL. 

John Hancock fell, as, in his eulogy on Horace Mann, 
he said every true warrior would wish to fall, *'with his 
armor on." The iron was crushed at last. Death came 
suddenly, entered the State House unseen and unher- 
alded, — ^found the Commissioner sitting at the desk of 
duty, touched the fine machinery of his brain and 
stopped it forever, liberating the soul into the leisure of 
heavenly rest. For sixty-six years, three months and 
thirteen days the man breathed vital air, and was then 
translated to immortality. His body died at ten minutes 
after ten o'clock, on Monday morning June the first, 
1891. The circumstances of the tragic change are 
recorded with minuteness in the Ohio newspapers of the 
week in which the mournful event took place. 



78 JOHN HANCOCK. 

The first day of a new month and of a new season, 
June and Summer, had dawned, and it was the first 
working day of a fresh week, Monday. Everything 
betokened life and hope and vigor. Dr. Hancock arrived 
at his oifice, as was his daily custom, at about nine 
o'clock, apparently in his usual health and spirits. A 
reporter on the staff of the Columbus Dispatch dropped 
in and was entertained for a few minutes with pleasant 
office chat. The Commissioner, seated at his desk, began 
his day's duties by writing a note accepting an invitation 
to be the guest of Superintendent Thomas, while attend- 
ing the commencement exercises of the Schools of Ash- 
land, Ohio. *' If the train holds out to run, I expect to 
be with you on the 4th inst., about the time you name. 
Please give my kindest regards to your good wife for 
her solicitude for my wellfare. I shall look forward to a 
pleasant time." These were the words of the last letter — 
*'I shall look forward to a pleasant time." Shortly before 
ten o'clock, Dr. Hancock remarked to his chief clerk, Hon. 
Wm. S. Matthews, that he was not feeling quite well. 
Soon after this remark, Mr. Matthews had occasion 
to step out of the office on business, and the Commis- 
sioner was left with his statistical clerk, Mr. Richard L. 
Allbritain, whose table stood near that at which Dr. 
Hancock wrote. A few sentences passed between the 
gentlemen, on clerical matters, and both lapsed into 
silence. Not many moments passed before Mr. All- 
britain heard his chief breathing heavily, and, looking 
around, he saw the Doctor's body bent forward, his 
head resting on the desk, and his right arm hanging 
down as though in the act of reaching for something that 
had fallen to the floor. Mr. Allbritain sprang to his 
assistance, and was alarmed to discover unmistakable 



DEATH AND BURIAL. 79 

evidences of an apoplectic stroke. He called for help, 
and was promptly assisted by two gentlemen who 
chanced to be passing the office door, — Captain Edmond- 
son, of the Adjutant-General's office, and Mr. W. S. 
Plum, of Bellefontaine. The dying Commissioner was 
carried to a lounge, and medical aid was immediately 
summoned. Doctor Probs, Secretary of the State Board 
of Health, soon reached the room, and Doctors White 
and Flowers also came within a few minutes. But the 
stricken man was beyond the aid of science. He was 
unconscious from the time he received the stroke, and his 
heart ceased to beat within ten minutes of the instant 
his head first bowed upon the table. It was observed 
that, when the fata! moment came, and his breast fell 
forward upon the desk, his watch chain was broken, 
and the case of his watch was twisted. The watch and 
chain of gold were given him by the teachers of the 
Chillicothe Schools. 

The swift, sad tidings spreading to every room of the 
Capitol drew to the dead Commissioner's solemn pres- 
ence the State officials from the Governor down. The 
flags were put at half mast. The terrible news of her 
husband's decease was borne to Mrs. Hancock and her 
family by Mr. Allbritain. The city of Columbus was 
in mourning for the departure of a man universally 
respected and loved. 

On the morning of June 2, a meeting of State officers 
and others was held at the office of the Attorney-General. 
Speeches eulogistic of Dr. Hancock were made by Gov- 
ernor Campbell, Judge Williams, of the Supreme Court, 
Attorney-General Watson, Auditor Poe, Professor Knott, 
Superintendent of the Deaf and Dumb Institution, and 
others. A series of resolutions, drawn by Governor 



8o JOHN HANCOCK. 

Campbell, Judge Williams and General Watson, was 
adopted. 

Religious services over the remains were conducted 
at the Broad Street Presbyterian Church, Columbus, at 
4 o'clock P. M., Wednesday, June 3. *' The services," 
says a Columbus newspaper, **were attended by Gov- 
erner Campbell and all the State officers, the State Board 
of Equalization adjourning for that purpose, besides a 
large number of prominent educators from a distance, in 
addition to many friends in this city. Rev. Francis E. 
Marsten officiated at the service and briefly reviewed 
the exemplary life of the honored dead, whose memory 
is revered by all, especially those who knew him best. 
The remarks of the officiating clergyman were supple- 
mented by Dr. Scott, of the State University, who, from 
personal knowledge, paid tributes to the mental endow- 
ments, educational worth, ability and high personal 
integrity of his departed friend. The casket was wreathed 
in flowers worked into the most beautiful designs, as 
tokens of esteem from those who had labored in educa- 
tional work with the deceased, and from friends and 
associates in Columbus and elsewhere. Those who 
acted as pall-bearers at the church were Messrs. W. G. 
Harrington, J. C. Gray, F. C. Maxwell, J. H. Dunn, 
C. A. Bowe and E. F. McManigal." 

The final resting place destined to receive the body 
of Dr. Hancock was a family lot in Spring Grove Ceme- 
tery, Cincinnati, where, beside the ashes of an infant 
daughter, his form was laid, on the fourth day of June. 
The remains were conveyed from Columbus to Cfncfn- 
nati, by a special train over the Midland Road. 

When the cars stopped at Wilmington, the school 
children of that place stood grouped on the platform 



DEATH AND BURIAL. 8l 

of the station, each holding a bunch of bright garden 
flowers. While the train paused, the teachers placed 
the bunches in pretty baskets and put them aboard. 

The train reached Spring Grove a little before noon, 
and the last obsequies were conducted in the chapel and 
at the grave by Rev. W. H. Warren, of the Central 
Congregational Church. The pall-bearers were, J. W. 
Knott, of Columbus, and E. A. Jones, of Massillon, 
representing the State Board of Examiners ; J. A. 
Shawan, of Columbus, and W. H. Morgan, of Cincin- 
nati, representing the School Superintendents ; F. C. 
Sessions and George H. Twiss, representing the His- 
torical Society; Chief Justice Minshall, Adjutant-General 
Dill and State Auditor Poe, representing the State 
officials. 

The day was a perfect one, — ^the sky was clear, the 
air sweet with the breath of June, the earth clad in 
beauty ; and never did the paradise of Spring Grove 
seem a lovelier type of the garden of immortal peace and 
happiness than when the mortal remains of our friend 
were tenderly lowered to a bed of silence and everlasting 
repose. The wide-spreading and low-bending boughs of 
a maple tree, with soft green foliage golden in sunshine, 
hung over the grave and the group of mourners that 
stood near it ; and as dust was committed to dust, and 
the last solemn prayer was spoken, the subdued hum- 
ming of honey-bees among the leaves overhead sounded 
like the music of benediction. Around the spot of burial 
were assembled the wife and sons of John Hancock, with 
many of his nearest and dearest old friends and neigh- 
bors. The Public Schools were represented by a 
number of veteran teachers who knew the deceased 
intimately in the early days when he taught in the 



82 JOHN HANCOCK. 

District and Intermediate Schools of Cincinnati, or 
served the city as Superintendent. The brown mould 
was heaped above the place of sepulture, and flowers, 
contributed by Ohio's State officers and the teachers of 
Chillicothe and the little children of Wilmington, were 
laid upon the grave, a fragrant offering. 

GENEALOGY AND FAMILY CONNECTIONS. 

John Hancock was too much engrossed with other 
concerns to devote great attention to the genteel 
pastime of constructing a family tree. Perhaps, being 
decidedly a man of the people, so loyal to the democratic 
idea of equality among men, he looked with some preju- 
dice upon those who discrimnate too nicely between the 
blue blood of aristocracy and the red blood of common 
folks. Or it may be that he considered it a more 
laudable ambition to be the founder of a worthy line than 
the scion of a distinguished ancestor. But it is an 
instinct of our nature to inquire somewhat into the 
origin of one's self, and Dr. Hancock, prompted by this 
instinct, did make some slight research into the history of 
his progenitors. His wife furnishes the following items 
of information: **Asto genealogy, I believe Mr. Han- 
cock received more data in regard to it from General 
Winfield S. Hancock than from any other source. 
Dates he did not preserve, but some time in the Seven- 
teenth Century, two brothers Hancock came from 
England to this country, one settling in Massachusetts, 
from whom Governor John Hancock of that State was 
descended. The other settled in New Jersey, and from 
him General Hancock traces his descent. So much, the 
General vouchsafed to our son. Lieutenant Wm. F. 



GENEALOGY AND FAMILY CONNECTIONS. 83 

Hancock, after he had ordered him to Governor's Island 
expressly to inquire from which of the families Will was 
descended. When told by Will that his great grand- 
father, Henry Hancock, came from New Jersey, the Gen- 
eral replied, * I, too, am of that stock, and you and I are 
the only officers of that name in the army. I will see 
you again.' But death came swiftly to General 
Hancock, and this little scrap of family history is about 
all that we have." 

Henry Hancock, with his wife, came from New 
Jersey early in this century, bringing with him his 
young son David, who was born in 1797, and was the 
eldest of his father's children. When quite a young 
man David Hancock was married to Miss Thomas Anne 
Roberts, a woman of Welch descent, but born in 
America. David Hancock seems to have been a man 
of force and popularity, with military predilections, for 
we find that in the year 1828, he was chosen Captain 
of the Seventh Company, Second Regiment, Third 
Brigade, of the Eighth Division of the Ohio Militia, — a 
company organized in 1818, under the command of 
Captain James B. Simmons. To David and Anne Han- 
cock were born six sons and daughters, Sarah, who died 
in infancy, John, the subject of this Memoir, Mary Ann, 
now Mrs. John Widmeyer, William R., Elizabeth, now 
Mrs. Philip Kennedy, and Joseph H. The mother died 
at the age of thirty-five, leaving five small children, of 
whom John was the eldest. 

The principal events of John Hancock's childhood 
and youth, — how he was raised by Mrs. iVloore ; and the 
story of his individual progress, — have already been 
related. Of his life in the relations of husband and 
father, it is proper to say something. He was married 



84 JOHN HANCOCK. 

August 2, 1855, to Miss Elizabeth Jones,* of Cincinnati, 
then a teacher in Herron's Seminary, Mt. Auburn. 
''How well do I remember," writes his friend, Hon. E. 
C. Ellis, ''the day — during the great Teachers' Institute 
held at Oxford, in 1855 — he came to me, handed me a 
very neat and modest wedding card, and said, ' Ellis, I 
want you to take charge of my classes for a few days.' 
The marriage proved an exceedingly fortunate union, the 
twain becoming one in the fullest scriptural sense, and 
living together in the utmost harmony and happiness for 
more than thirty-five years, when he passed on to 
prepare a place for her in the New World. And here 
let be recorded what Dr. Hancock's spirit would be most 
pleased to have set down, not only his constant lover- 
like devotion to her, but his often acknowledged indebted- 
ness to her wisdom, prudence, patience, and fidelity, as 
a ' helpmeet ' for him in all the vicissitudes of a laborious 
career. It would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that 
Mrs. Hancock, more than any other, or than all others, 
made her husband the successful man he was. She 
enabled him, by her sympathy, and cooperation, to 
perform the part that his inclination and temperament 
best fashioned him to act ; for there never was a man 
whose wishes better answered to his natural capacity 
than did his. Mrs. Hancock is a true queen of home, 
whose domestic affairs are regulated according to what 
Matthew Arnold calls the 'sweet ordering' of a 
womanly intellect and heart. A woman of vigorous 

* Mrs. Hancock is the daughter of a Virginia gentleman who 
removed to Clermont County and became Mayor of the town of 
New Richmond. She is a sister to Mr. Thomas Jones, of Dayton, 
Kentucky, well known as having long been a County officer in 
Campbell County, Kentucky. 



GENEALOGY AND FAMILY CONNECTIONS. 85 

constitution, strong common sense, rare industry and 
frugality, keen wit, fine sensibility, and liberal education, 
she united in the character of a good wife the sagacious 
counselor, the congenial friend, the admiring critic and 
the affectionate companion. Her accomplishments as an 
excellent housekeeper are supplemented by those social 
and moral graces which lend the highest charms to 
womanhood. A clear thinker, a discriminating reader, 
a poet, a pleasant talker, — how could she fail to prove 
the suited wife to such a husband ? The pair realized 
Tennyson's ideal marriage, in which the woman is set 
to the man 

* Like perfect music unto noble words.' 

Mrs. Hancock bore to her husband seven children, 
six of whom are living, one daughter and five sons. 
These are Mrs. Mary B. Chapman, a widow, now 
Assistant Principal of the Los Angeles High School ; 
Charles B. Hancock, lawyer and special attorney for the 
Coal and Iron and Improvement Co., of South-eastern 
Kentucky, Stanton, Powell County, Kentucky ; Wm. F. 
Hancock, First Lieutenant 5th Artillery, U. S. A., San 
Francisco ; Mason Parker Hancock, Real Estate Agent, 
Vancouver, B! A. ; John Hancock, Machinist in the 
B. & O. R. R. Shops, Chillicothe; and D. Roberts 
Hancock, Medical Student in the State University, 
Columbus, Ohio. Charles B. Hancock is an alumnus 
of Cincinnati University, and Lieutenant Wm. F., a 
graduate of West Point. Dr. Hancock held paramount 
the paternal duty of educating his children. The surest 
fortune that he could bestow, was, he thought, a good 
* bringing up.' The aristocracy to which he was most 



86 - JOHN HANCOCK. 

anxious to promote his daughter and sons was the Four 
Hundred of Culture. 

It was made up of reading-rooms, the house of John 
Hancock, — ^from garret to basement, from kitchen to 
parlor. In the summer of 1888, I spent a few days with 
the Hancocks when they were living at Chillicothe, in 
their comfortable home there, the quaint fashioned, 
thick-walled, solid, wide-roomed old Holcomb House, on 
Caldwell Street. Dr. Hancock had just returned from a 
sojourn in the South, and all the children, except Charles, 
as I remember, were at home,— the last general family 
reunion they ever enjoyed. One afternoon, I recollect, 
every member of the household, and the guest, too, fell 
into a bookish mood, and all joined in a laugh when the 
common discovery was made that not one was without 
a volume, or a magazine in hand. We were having a 
'good time,' Mr. Hancock remarked. A beautiful spirit 
reigned in the the Hancock family at home. Father, 
mother and children worked together in harmony, and 
shared the same recreations. Dr. Hancock, though 
a firm, and at times a stern, parent, was never capri- 
cious nor exacting. The young people regarded him 
with a love that swallowed up fear, and he knew it. In 
the words of his wife, * The life among his children 
was a merry one, with occasional outbursts of vexation 
at noise or waywardness, which in their mildness were 
amusing.' By the unconscious tuition which his just 
and pure character radiated, the children were controlled 
and educated. 

The deep and lasting impression that his daily walk 
and conversation had upon his family is revealed, with 
the sincerity of love and sorrow, in words written by his 
soldier son, in California, June 2, 1891, to a bereaved 



CHARACTER AND LIFE SERVICES. Bj 

mother: * He was a man/ wrote Lieutenant Hancock, 
* that anyone would have been proud to call father, — a 
man who never did a mean or dishonorable thing in his 
life ; and whose faults, if we can call them such, were 
all on the side of kindness and charity. It is a terrible 
thing to think that such a man should have been taken 
before his time, and leave such a void in the hearts of 
his family and friends; — and all were his friends who 
had anything good or honest in them. Never did I think 
when I left him two years and a half ago that I would 
never see his kindly face or hear his dear voice again. 
I am a wanderer over the land, and could have expected 
that he would die some time, perhaps, away from me ; 
but not so soon, not so soon. And I will never see him 
again, nor hear him ask in his good humored way, '' What 
do you think of that, Bill ?" * >K * * Parker had just left 
me that morning at Alcatraz, when I heard the news. 
And I telegraphed to the city for him to come over. 
We could neither of us speak that night." 

CHARACTER AND LIFE SERVICES. 

John Hancock was of the optimistic temperament ; 
hope and faith never deserted him ; he believed in God, 
in man, in the educability of the race, and in the sure 
progress of civilization. A vigorous constitution and 
robust health supplied abundant energy to keep his body 
and mind pleasurably active ; the times in which he 
lived stimulated him to exertion ; he was ambitious, 
aspiring and courageous ; but the influences which fixed 
his early opinions and shaped his habits, and the con- 
straining occupations of his later life, held him within 
the bounds of what is well called liberal conservatism. 



88 JOHN HANCOCK. 

He was regular, not eccentric, a man identified with 
established institutions, obedient to existing social cus- 
toms, orthodox in theology, allopathic in medicine, in 
politics a Federal and protectionist. Usage and conven- 
tional form were respected by him, his clothes were cut 
in the prevailing style, he mixed with his neighbors, he 
read the daily newspapers and the monthly magazines, 
he voted at all elections and generally his ticket was 
open and "straight," he went to church on Sunday, 
said grace at table, and, in a word, performed the 
standard duties usually expected of a conscientious 
citizen, without affectation of manner or singularity of 
theory. 

A strong anti-slavery Whig up to the time the Whig 
party went to pieces, he thenceforward adhered firmly 
to the Republican party, believing strongly in the neces- 
sity of union, centralized government, and the abolition 
of slavery. Decidedly a partisan, he took a lively and 
zealous interest in every political campaign, engaging 
with a keen relish in the discussion of current questions 
at issue, and supporting in true American fashion the 
candidates of his choice. It was his opinion that "a 
man without a party is almost as bad off as a man with- 
out a country." The defeat of the Republicans in any 
contest he took as a personal misfortune, assuming as a 
settled fact that the principles of his party are right in 
the main and those of the opposition in the main wrong. 
In November, 1884, he wrote to an intimate friend, with 
good-humored chagrin, ''Since the election of Cleveland 
I am to be considered dead — though letters may be sent 
to me as though I were still alive." Notwithstanding 
his zeal and legitimate active participancy in politics, 
Dr. Hancock was adverse to employing partisan measures 



CHARACTER AND LIFE SERVICES. 89 

in affairs not falling within the proper sphere of State or 
national politics. Especially did he insist on separating 
the interests of religion and education from the corrupt 
influence of the saloon caucus and the '* ward bummer's" 
mercenary vigilance. The election of men to school 
offices as a reward for partisan service, and the appoint- 
ment of teachers and superintendents from political 
motives, he deprecated as a most serious evil. A letter 
of his, dated May, 1891, conveys his mind on the subject 
in these words: *'I fear that even in thinking of a 
partisan test in the employment of a teacher the Board 
is entering upon a course that can not but end in a 
lowering of the morale of the schools. There is no safe 
rule to follow other than 'get the best.' If dickering 
politics comes in, the character of the schools is gone." 
As regards theology and religion. Dr. Hancock was 
something eclectic. The neighborhood and county in 
which he spent his youth embraced a variety of sects, 
that contended each for proselytes. From his father 
the boy must have received the impress of Methodistic 
instruction, and a reverential introduction to the Bible. 
By his benefactress, Mrs. Moore, he was taught and 
trained in strict accordance with the severe exactions of 
the rigorous Quakerism which she professed and prac- 
ticed. After some years residence in Cincinnati, Dr. 
Hancock became a constant attendant at the Congrega- 
tional Church, having been attracted by the eloquent 
and inspiring sermons of Dr. C. B. Boynton. Not until 
after his removal to Columbus, to take the office of State 
School Commissioner, did he attach himself to a partic- 
ular religious denomination, as a professed church mem- 
ber ; he there joined the Broad Street Presbyterian 
Church. 



90 JOHN HANCOCK. 

While maintaining the essentials of protestant evan- 
gelical Christianity, and adhering to formal worship at 
home and abroad, Dr. Hancock was tolerant of all sects, 
and not unwilling to consider the grounds of any sincere 
belief or disbelief, however repugnant to his ideas or 
even to his prejudices. Though his conservative nature 
fortified him against innovating doubts, he was not timid 
about entertaining new ideas ; he was willing that every 
thinker should think aloud, and liked to listen to repre- 
sentative voices of whatever school, Jew or Gentile, 
Catholic or Protestant, and to compare the 'ics, Msms, 
and 'ologies, of every religion, science and philosophy. 
The momentous questions growing out of the conflicts 
or concords of science and theology, — the profound 
discussions of modern times concerning evolution, 
biology, and the basis of ethics, occupied a large part 
of his studious thought, and consumed many nours of 
his leisure. Significant books of fundamental principles, 
dealing with the problems of human nature, life and 
destiny were eagerly sought and studied by him. He 
was modestly conversant with the writings of Spencer, 
Huxley, Darwin and other modern authors who have 
disturbed the world by their arguments and specula- 
tions. Doubtless Dr. Hancock's habit of delving into 
books of a philosophic or metaphysical character was 
induced by the systematic reading of the works of Sir 
William Hamilton, which he carried through in company 
with Rickoff, Parker, Tappan and others, shortly after 
he first came to Cincinnati. In after years, his intimacy 
with Dr. W. T. Harris, gave renewed ardor to his inves- 
tigations in speculative philosophy. 

If the rectitude of a man's character may be inferred 
from the uprightness of his outward conduct, — if the 



CHARACTER AND LIFE SERVICES. 91 

tree may be known by its fruit, — John Hancock was 
pure in heart, kind by instinct, true to the line of unde- 
viating morality. The clean soul which was his 
essential self was clothed in a body which he kept 
undefiled. The virtues of chastity and temperance 
were not only never violated by him — ^they were 
inviolable. Free and generous in the use and enjoy- 
ment of the good things of life, partaking joyously of the 
legitimate pleasures supplied through the senses and 
the imagination, he yet kept appetites and passions in 
abeyance, under the sovereignty of a strong will that 
never abdicated the throne. Perhaps he spent his 
money somewhat too carelessly, but liberality is a fault 
that leans to virtue's side. A friend in need could ask a 
pecuniary favor of him, and rather than not accommo- 
date his friend, Hancock would borrow in order to loan. 
Like Goldsmith, he would give of his substance, some- 
times, to the unworthy poor, moved by the pangs of pity. 
A weakness so amiable, associated with many uncom- 
promising traits of rigorous morality, might be mildly 
named a '' redeeming vice.'* The mint and cummin of 
external, minor morality were not substituted, by Dr. 
Hancock, for the weightier matters of the law; the 
severity of his ethical code was applied to the eradica- 
tion of evil that 

" Sticks deeper, grows with more pernicious root" 

in the hidden soul ; no pity, no toleration, no favor, could 
he extend to falsehood, hypocricy, dishonesty, or to the 
mean vices of detraction, scandal and pusillanimity. 
Truth, sincerity, honor, fidelity ruled his spirit and 
determined his deeds. The man who had once deceived 
him, or lied in any form, could never regain his confi- 



92 JOHN HANCOCK. 

dence or his love. The frowning anger with which he 
heard the disclosure of a contemptible scheme or act 
seemed so relentless that one, seeing it, might imagine 
him harsh, unforgiving and bigoted: but he was not so; 
he was neither vindictive nor self-righteous ; his resent- 
ment was filled with sorrow. There were occasions on 
which he appeared cold and hard as granite, — but this 
granite was easy to melt. A certain unsentimental 
sturdiness in him caused him to scorn weakness and 
snivelling. But the sight of misfortune or suffering he 
could not bear without manifesting sympathy and 
tenderness. Though half ashamed of tears, like a big 
boy, he could not always restrain their flow ; his eyes 
would moisten at the relation of a pathetic story, and, in 
the manner of Macduff, he was apt to betray his emotion 
by his attempts to hide it. The promptings of compas- 
sion impelled him to deeds of kindness. 

Dr. Hancock's disposition was remarkably free from 
envy, jealousy and mistrust. And what an addition it 
makes to a man's stock of excellences, to subtract envy 
jealousy and mistrust ! Most men are self-seeking — they 
rejoice in their own victories, and can bear with cheer- 
ful equanimity the defeats of their competitors. Dr. 
Hancock was fond of distinction, — he strove for the 
palm, — but he also helped others to succeed, and took a 
sincere pleasure in their prosperity and promotion. Was 
there ever a man more ready to do favors than he was ? 
He discovered exquisite satisfaction in planning practical 
ways of serving those whom he considered meritorious, 
or whom, for any reason, he chose to befriend. He was 
forever ** lending a hand," and that, too, without expect- 
ing the loan to be returned with interest. 

The individuality of John Hancock was strongly 



CHARACTER AND LIFE SERVICES. 93 

emphasized. His personal appearance, his manner, his 
voice, his opinions, distinguished him in any company. 
Whatever he said or wrote had a flavor of its own. The 
name of no other man in the list of Ohio's prominent 
educators, calls to the memory a more strikingly recog- 
nizable figure than does that of John Hancock. Strong, 
masculine, independent, he had much of that quality 
which Swift calls egoity, and which is not always distin- 
guishable from egotism. Unconscious egotism is often 
worn as a defensive armor, and it may cover a nature 
essentially modest. Mr. Hancock was self-made and 
self-propelled: who would push him forward if he did 
not move himself ? By strenuous effort he won his way 
from point to point. Why be scared in the presence 
of people } He conceived that he had rights upon this 
planet— no man more. Therefore he always took grounds, 
and was not to be abashed, ignored, or suppressed. He 
had views on every subject. He made himself at home 
in all companies. He was the farthest removed from 
that type of person described by Emerson, the type that 
seems to cringe and apologize for very existence. Han- 
cock was not that sort of man. Finding himself in the 
world, with life to live, he availed himself of all the 
privileges of the occasion. And so he lived and learned 
and wrought with all his mind and might, aiding himself 
by such instruments as he could command, in the way 
of books, friends, teachers, and experience. Forceful, 
but not obtrusive ; inquisitive, but never presumptuous ; 
devoted to his convictions, but not intolerant or obstinate ; 
he solicited knowledge from every source, and tested all 
he gathered with the touch-stone of his own reason aided 
by the judgment of the best minds he could consult in 
books or men. Few men had more reverence than he 



94 JOHN HANCOCK. 

had for authority. He was humble in the presence of 
acknowledged greatness, and never arrogant towards 
equals or inferiors; for he seemed endowed with the 
three reverences named by Goethe : Reverence for that 
which is above us, for that which is around, and for that 
which is below. 

Very sociable, and as ready to give as to receive the 
quick currency of genial intercourse, he was welcome 
because polite and agreeable in society. Whether he 
came as an accidental visitor or an invited guest, he was 
greeted with smiles and hearty hand-shaking (he shook 
hands heartily), and was admitted to the informal talk 
of the family circle. Old-fashioned, simple-mannered 
folks called him ''neighborly.-' He liked to be with 
people, in small companies or large, and therefore availed 
himself of opportunities to attend parties, picnics, clubs, 
concerts, lectures, dramatic performances, religious 
gatherings, educational conventions, and political meet- 
ings. These occasions of public assemblage were rich 
in pleasure and instruction for him, — they supplemented 
his reading, widened his horizon of thought, and gave 
to his imperfect scholastic acquirements the equivalent 
of a ''University Extension Course." He kept his eyes, 
ears and mind open ; seized with avidity the things he 
saw and heard, and treasured up all as material for future 
use in the way of fact, argument, illustration or contem- 
plative enjoyment. In his vacations he traveled a good 
deal, never failing to utilize the incidental advantages 
afforded to members of the State and National Teachers' 
Associations, of visiting interesting places and meeting 
representative men. Every city in which he sojourned 
he made a study of, not only in respect to its outward 
features, but in its social and literary institutions, its 



CHARACTER AND LIFE SERIVCES. 95 

history, character and prospects. Much as he Hked 
society and to be where numbers congregate for common 
improvement; much as he valued that inspiration which 
the collective energy and wisdom of the impersonal 
multitude impart to the individual, — as a great dynamo 
charges the air with induced electricity, — Dr. Hancock 
perhaps found his most perfect satisfaction and his 
highest intellectual profit, not in society but in solitude. 
Self-activity, individual effort, must be, in the nature of 
things, the means, if not the chief end, of human culture. 
We are not taught, — we learn. Knowledge can not be 
poured into the mind, it must be drawn in, — by a vital 
act. No one can read for another or think for another or 
feel for another. Dr. Hancock realized the truth of this, 
and he exercised his mental powers to their utmost bent, 
in the tranquil privacy of his library. His reading chair 
was his college. He organized a studious ''Club of One,'* 
and himself was the club. Books were to him knowledge, 
power, security, solace and delight. The broad, undu- 
lous fields of general literature were his soul's pasture. 
The books on which he fed were the ripe and juicy ones, 
the nutritious fruits of wit and wisdom, the precious and 
permanent classics of the world. He was familiar with 
the standard novels, dramas, poems, essays in modern 
English literature ; and the range of his curiosity led him 
to peruse the famous masterpieces in prose and verse of 
foreign authors, ancient and recent; though he was 
obliged to content himself with translations. Though 
unable to read Italian, French or German, he was well 
acquainted with the substance of the principal writings 
of Dante and Petrarch, of' Rabelais, Montaigne, Voltaire 
and Hugo, of Goethe, Schiller and some of the German 
philosophers. Shakespeare and Wordsworth were his 



96 JOHN HANCOCK. 

favorite poets ; Dickens and Thackeray his chosen novel- 
ists ; he read Carlyle with worshipful wonder, especially 
** Sartor," and was an admirer of Arnold's essays. 

Dr. Hancock preached the gospel of work, and prac- 
ticed his preaching. Chaucer describes one of his 
Canterbury pilgrims as seeming busier than he was : 
Hancock was busier than he seemed. What an amazing 
amount of good, honest work he accomplished I The 
habit of doing regular duties every day fixed upon him 
in childhood, and remained with him up to the very 
moment of his demise. The pen was in his hand when 
his summons came. The son of industrious parents, the 
only fortune he inherited was the necessity of earning 
his own living, by the sweat of his brow or the toil of 
his brain, or by both. His first tasks were those which 
fall to a farmer's boy. Then he learned to work as 
student. Then as teacher. Assuredly he worked his 
way on and up. He went ahead, seeking service, and 
willing to take hold. Ready hands and faithful hearts 
rarely fail to find employment. Doors open to importu- 
nate knocking. This knight of labor pushed forward. 
He shrank from no hardship, evaded no necessary 
drudgery. He paid for what he gained by spending 
himself; glad to spend and be spent. The debating 
society, the literary club, the library, the institute, the 
teachers' association, afford him fields of labor. He 
goes to the city and competes with other energetic 
teachers for the prizes of success. He writes, speaks, 
edits journals. He becomes City Superintendent, and 
as he rises in importance and dignity in the eyes of the 
world, more and more work calls to be done by him. 
And so it goes on through life. The duties pile up, the 
responsibilities redouble, the burdens grow. To him 



CHARACTER AND LIFE SERVICES. 97 

that hath strain to bear, tasks to accomplish, care to 
endure, shall be added other strain, tasks and cares. 
How noble a thing it is to keep on doing one's simple 
duty, year after year, until **it is finished." 

What was Dr. Hancock's ruling motive or purpose ? 
What was the tenor of his activity ? What, essentially 
did he do, or aim to do ? His dominant wish which 
prompted him to engage, with almost passionate ardor, in 
the several labors of his career, was the wish to benefit 
as many as possible by the ameliorating offices of educa- 
tion. He was a teacher, an educator. A man of the 
people, he loved the people, believed in them, gave his 
life, soul and body, to the cause of the common man, 
hoping to serve humanity best by means of the common 
public school. Thoroughly democratic, he interpreted 
the Declaration of Independence quite literally, and 
read in its words a reinforcement of the Bible doctrine of 
the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. 

** This thing I do," — might have been his heart's 
language, — 'M would work for the common school, — I 
would teach the children of the people, — I would be an 
uplifter of the masses." And he was a true apostle of 
the people. His utterances embody the highest ideas of 
average democracy on culture, duty, life, and man's 
destiny on earth. A man of the people, he served the 
people in their highest and deepest needs. He wrote no 
famous books, he founded no original system of peda- 
gogics, he climbed no pinnacle of special scholarship; 
but his example was a treatise on correct conduct, his 
devotion to the best known principles of teaching was 
better than a new theory, his desire to know all truth 
and his reverence for all learning were more than equiv- 
alent to the fame which erudition gives. The State of 



98 JOHN HANCOCK. 

Ohio honors him for the services he rendered to her 
schools. His name is known and respected by the most 
eminent leaders of his profession in every State of the 
Union. He has gone home, but gentle and tender recol- 
lections of him will linger with those who knew and 
loved him, as long as consciousness shall endure. 
Children of generations to come shall inherit the 
precious results of his life work, and will pay him a due 
tribute of gratitude when they read on his tombstone 

JOHN HANCOCK, EDUCATOR. 

The pen to which was entrusted the task of record- 
ing the lines of this Memoir, falters to trace the con- 
cluding words. What a trial it is to the emotions of a 
writer to sketch the life of a dear friend recently 
deceased, only they can realize who have been called 
upon to discharge a duty so sadly sacred, — so laden with 
memory of the "days that are no more." Thirty-five 
years of familiar association with John Hancock bound 
me closely to him by many ties. From him, at a time 
when encouragement was needed, I received unsolicited 

" Favors so sweet they went to my heart's root." 

I first met him at Oxford, Ohio, in 1855 : by his agency 
I was drawn to Cincinnati in 1862; our mutual relations 
and common pursuits fostered an intimacy not unlike 
that which sometimes exists between an older brother 
and a younger, whose sympathies are reciprocal. 

In July 1882, the Ohio Teachers' Association met 
at Niagara, and on the closing session of the last day, 
services were held to the memory of Wm. D. Henkle. 
At the conclusion of these exercises, in a familiar conver- 
sation relating to Mr. Henkle, who was much endeared to 



JOHN HANCOCK, EDUCATOR. 99 

US both, Mr. Hancock said, half in jest half in earnest, 
that he wished, in case he should die first, I would 
write his obituary. In the same semi-serious mood that 
led him to speak, I answered, giving a playful promise. 
It seems that he mentioned this interview to one or two ; 
and I remember he alluded to it in my presence in 
June, 1888. On the day of his burial, in Spring Grove, 
Mr. Allbritain called my attention to this pledge; and, 
afterwards, Mrs. Hancock, standing beside her husband's 
new-made grave, added her request that I should write 
down, for permanent preservation, an estimate of his 
life, work, and character. Mrs. Hancock's wishes were 
seconded and urged by many friends of the deceased, and 
I could not refuse to discharge the duty assigned me ; for 
what had before appeared only an expression of confidential 
regard, now assumed the character of a sacred compact. 

It was proposed that a small memorial volume be 
prepared and published, and the book now in the reader's 
hand is the fruit of the suggestion. The editor has 
availed himself of the contributions of several educators, 
men and women, who were well acquainted with Dr. 
Hancock, and who enjoyed his full confidence and earnest 
regard. The words of these devoted and judicious 
witnesses of the beauty and nobleness of Dr. Hancock's 
character, give authenticity, as well as color and variety, 
to the narrative : the man is truly and lovingly described 
in a symposium of his best friends and fairest judges. 
His own language, also, will be found quoted in many 
paragraphs of the book, reflecting personal traits, and 
emphasizing characteristic and cherished opinions, often 
expressed with humor, and always with vigor ; the pen of 
the dead still speaks, and the mute page seems audible 
with his well-remembered voice. 



^- 




I can not grieve for him,— he stands 

A strong, bright presence smiling down upon me, 

A palm of triumph held within his hands. 

And in his eyes the look that once so won me. 

How can I grieve for him ? for rest 
Remains to him whose life was noble toiling; 
How grieve? when his exultant footsteps pressed 
That shore where robes are washed from earthly soiling. 

I can not grieve for him,— for Peace, 

In her white raiment and her stillness, ever 

Fills for his hand full cups of glad release 

From ills and cares gone down in Life's pure river. 

Oh, who can grieve for him? He stands 

A strong, bright presence with the just, the glorious, — 

A palm of triumph held within his hands. 

Like them, o'er Grief and Pain, o'er Death victorious. 

Mrs. J. H. 
Los Angeles, Cal., Nov., 12, 1891. 



IN MEMORIAM. 



I. PERSONAL LETTERS AND MESSAGES OF 
CONDOLENCE. 

Seldom has it happened anywhere that the memory 
of a man, whose life was devoted solely to the cause of 
education, has been honored as was Dr. Hancock's by 
so many expressions of private and public love and 
esteem. The public schools of Dayton and Chillicothe 
were closed on the day of the funeral. The Boards of 
Education of those cities, and of Cincinnati, Lebanon, 
New Richmond, Loveland, and I know not how many 
other towns, hastened to call special meetings and pass 
resolutions of respect and condolence. The Principals' 
Association, of Cincinnati, resolved, among other things, 
** That in the death of this well known friend of popular 
education, the State has lost one of its most efficient 
public officers, — ^the cause of education, one of its fore- 
most and capable exponents, — and the teachers of Cin- 
cinnati have suffered a personal bereavement in the loss 
of a dearly beloved and constant friend." The State 
Board of Examiners passed resolutions of a like nature. 
Such is the tenor of many other testimonials elicited by 
the sad event. 

In Columbus, action was taken by the J. C. McCoy 
Post No. I, G. A. R., resulting in a message of sympathy 
to Mrs. Hancock, on account of the death of *' a true and 



104 JOHN HANCOCK. 

honored friend and comrade." The Committee closed 
their communication with the words, *' We are glad that 
our emblem — ^the G. A. R. Button — rests with him." 

From every direction, far and near, numerous tele- 
graphic messages flew to the house of mourning ; and the 
mails brought a multitude of letters bearing ** golden 
opinions from all sorts of people," — some conspicuous in 
the educational world, others who knew Dr. Hancock as 
the genial companion of literary men, others who had 
received from him personal or professional favors, — but 
the greater number those who were attached to him by 
the bonds of simple friendship or the nearer ties of family 
connection. It would take up too much space in a volume 
of this kind, to reproduce a tenth part, of the true and 
beautiful things written of Dr. Hancock in the many 
letters here referred to. A few representative passages, 
however, are given, as conveying sentiments that fairly 
generalize the thought and feeling of many. Andrew J. 
Rickoff wrote from New York, "Mr. Hancock was the 
warmest and dearest of my friends. Intimately asso- 
ciated as I was very nearly forty years ago, I have ever 
since maintained with him the most sympathetic rela- 
tions. The reflection that he has left record of an 
honorable life and of distinguished services to the State 
is a better heritage to his children than great wealth." 
Emerson E. White wrote, 'M loved your departed hus- 
band as a brother, and esteemed him as the truest of men 
and the noblest of friends. I first met him at the State 
Association in Cleveland, n-early thirty-eight years ago, 
and we have met nearly every year since. My esteem 
and love for him have increased from year to year." 
William H. Morgan said, " For forty years I have known 
him well. He has been in my eyes a pillar of the educa- 



MESSAGES OF CONDOLENCE. 105 

tional structure of our State, — yes, in our Nation." 
John Ogden sent from North Dakota his sorrowful word, 
** You must allow me a small place in the almost world- 
wide weeping for the loss of your dear husband. The 
glory of his life shines brightly across the stream of 
death." J. L. Pickard, from Iowa City, wrote, **I loved 
him as I have loved very few others. True and sincere 
was his friendship. For more than twenty-five years — 
Hancock, Harris and Rickoff, are names most frequently 
heard in my home. Their friendship has proved a bless- 
ing to me — ^their work an inspiration for me. The 
sessions of our * Round Table' are the happiest memories 
of my life. Because he loved his wife and children so 
tenderly, I loved him. Because he had a great warm 
heart, I loved him. Because he sought so patiently and 
so lovingly the good of the unnumbered youth to whose 
education his life was devoted, I loved him." 

From California, LeRoy D. Brown wrote, "your 
noble husband was an inspiration to all who knew him, but 
in a particular degree was he an inspiration to teachers. 
In 1866 when I entered upon my chosen work, my at- 
tention was called to Dr. Hancock's strong articles on 
education, which appearred in school journals. Later 
came his Reports as the Superintendent of Instruction in 
Cincinnati ; which led me to travel a long distance that 
I might hear him lecture before the Washington County 
Institute at Marietta. Since 1886 his potrait has hung 
in our parlor." The estimate of a representative 
woman, distinguished as an educational leader, Mrs. 
Delia L. Williams, of Delaware, Ohio, is summed in these 
sentences : ** He was a good man, high-souled, true, one 
of God's noblemen. Nobody knows better than I how 
he scorned a mean act. He was one of my best friends. 



I06 JOHN HANCOCK. 

The world is poorer, much poorer for his going. I think 
I shall never cease to miss him." 

Extracts in a strain similar to the foregoing might be 
selected from dozens of letters from other sources, but 
these sufficiently indicate the esteem in which Dr. 
Hancock was held by those of his own profession who 
knew him best. I will add the witness of a gentleman 
who, though not a teacher, has long been identified with 
the highest interests of education, Dr. C. G. Comegys, 
of Cincinnati. 

Cincinnati, June 2d, I89i. 

-^ Dear Mrs. Hancock : — 

The blow that has fallen upon you has been felt by the multi- 
tude among whom your husband's name was a household word. 

The long and happy acquaintance which I have had with him is 
a great feature of my life, and with no one have I received more 
benefit in regard to themes of education than from him. The whole 
State feels his loss and expresess it abundantly. The deepest sym- 
pathy now gathers about you and your children, and all pray that 
the Lord's great love may hold up your fainting hearts. God bless 
you all. Faithfully yours, 

C. G. COMEGYS. 

II. ACTION OF THE OHIO TEACHERS' 
ASSOCIATION. 

The forty-fifth annual meeting of the Ohio Teachers' 
Association was held in 1891, at Chautauqua, New York. 
A part of the session of Thursday, July 9, was devoted 
to memorial services in honor of Dr. Hancock, Rev. J. S. 
Campbell, Thomas A. Pollock and F. E. Fuson, members 
of the Association deceased since the meeting of 1890. 
On this occasion Dr. Samuel Findley, of Akron, editor 
of the Ohio Educational Monthly, read a very complete, 
lucid and beautiful memorial sketch of the life and 



PASSAGES FROM DR. FINDLEY'S EULOGY. 107 

character of Dr. John Hancock. This admirable tribute, 
prepared by request of the Executive Committee, is 
published in full in the Monthly, of August, 1891, as part 
of the proceedings of the State Association. To repro- 
duce it here would be to repeat many of the biographical 
details included in the Memoir to which the first part of 
this volume is devoted. I can not, however, forbear 
quoting a few of the concluding paragraphs of Dr. Find- 
ley's sketch, which set forth some general views that 
fittingly belong in this connection. 

PASSAGES FROM DR. FINDLEY'S EULOGY. 

''Having thus passed in rapid review some of the 
leading events in the life of Dr. Hancock, there remains 
the more difficult task of attempting some estimate of 
his character and worth. And here the words he used 
concerning another are appropriate ; * I am painfully 
aware of how inadequate such an estimate must prove to 
be— for who shall be able to pluck the mystery from out 
the heart of man ? ' 

The story of Dr. Hancock's career is the old story of 
honesty, industry, self-reliance, and perseverance. In 
him was no guile. He loved right and hated wrong. He 
walked day by day on the line of rectitude. In nearly 
forty years that I have known him, I never heard a 
suspicion cast upon his honesty. He was a lover and a 
doer of the truth. His simplicity, directness, and natur- 
alness, in all relations, were admirable. He never left 
room for doubt as to his meaning or his position on any 
question of importance. 

He was an industrious worker. His broad and varied 
scholarship and his ready and effective use of his powers 



lo8 JOHN HANCOCK. 

were wrought out by his own industry. Early obstacles 
and privations did not deter him from putting to use the 
talent committed to him. He made great attainment and 
won high rank by doing a true man's honest work day 
by day. One of his assistants in the Commissioner's 
office, Mr. Allbritain, bears this testimony to his untiring 
industry : ' He was never an idler. When official duties 
did not require his attention, he would engage in reading ; 
and this was his custom, sick or well. He gave strict 
attention to his professional duties, from which nothing 
could divert him. When a candidate before the people, 
he gave no attention to politics, nor made any personal 
effort to secure his own election. Being asked on one 
occasion when he expected to begin his campaign, he 
replied : *' I shall begin my institute campaign very 
shortly.' " 

Though Dr. Hancock was an earnest man, there was 
in him a vein of humor which gave zest to his conversa- 
tion and made him the life of every circle in which he 
moved. His wit was of the chaste and refmed type, and 
always tempered with goodness of heart. 

He was magnanimous— great of mind and large of 
heart. There was nothing petty in his nature. No 
mean jealousies marred his intercourse with his fellow- 
workers. In all the years of my acquaintance with him, 
I never knew him to indulge in detraction or in harsh or 
unkind criticism of fellow-teachers. He was disposed to 
look upon the sunny side. Though he suffered financial 
embarrassment, and there came into his life some sharp 
sorrows, these were to him only as the lowering of a 
summer mist. He seemed to realize that the sky was 
above the clouds, and that soon all would be bright again. 
This touching tribute is paid by Mrs. Hancock : * We 



PASSAGES FROM DR. FINDLEY'S EULOGY. 109 

lived together more than thirty-five years, and I never 
knew a more even and sunny temperament than his.' 

Dr. Hancock was not obtrusive in the expression of 
his religious opinions and experiences, but he was devout 
and earnest in his religious life. The last time I looked 
upon his face and heard his voice, he spoke of a book he 
had been reading that had cleared up in his mind some 
perplexing religious questions. Doubtless ere this the 
clear light of heaven has shown into his soul. His was 
not a faith in creeds or sects, but in God and humanity. 
His was a charity that '*suffereth long and is kind." 
Though always an attendant on public worship and a 
supporter of the church, it was not until since his call to 
the office of State School Commissioner that he made a 
public confession of his Christian faith. When residing 
in Cincinnati, he attended the Vine Street Congregational 
Church, of which the late Dr. Boynton was pastor, serv- 
ing for several years as one of its trustees. After 
removing to Columbus he united with the Broad Street 
Presbyterian Church, of which he continued a member to 
the time of his death. 

Of Dr. Hancock as an educator there is not time to 
speak fittingly ; and my poor words could add little to 
his fame, for his praise is in all the school districts. In 
his educational doctrine and practice he was what might 
be called a liberal conservative. He believed in progress, 
but had little faith in royal roads to learning. He was 
not apt to be carried away by the newest educational 
theories and devices. His batteries of wit and sarcasm 
were sometimes trained upon those conservatives who 
are sure the old way is always best ; but oftenest upon 
the camp of the radicals, who, in his own words, are 
ever discovering *the true educational philosopher's 



no JOHN HANCOCK. 

stone that is to transmute everything it touches into the 
golden ore of wisdom.' 

Did time permit, I might add pages of testimony 
showing the high estimate in which he was held where- 
ever he was known. A lady teacher writes from 
Springfield, Ohio : * We share a common sorrow in the 
death of Commissioner Hancock. To me he has been 
for many years, in an impersonal way, an inspiration 
and a help, because of a little talk I once had with him, 
which he no doubt forgot in an hour, but which strength- 
ened my hands and cheered my heart.' 

Miss Sutherland says, * Dr. Hancock always 
impressed me with the sterling honesty of his character. 
1 felt that he could be implicitly trusted. Since being 
with him here in Columbus, I learned to think him more 
genial than before ; perhaps only because I knew him 
better. He believed much more in the "broadening of the 
mind by communion with the world's great writers than 
in cramming from text-books for a teacher's examination. 
This accounts in a measure for his great interest in the 
Ohio Teachers' Reading Circle. He met with our local 
branch last spring and read us a paper on Shakespeare, 
full of learning, wit and appreciation. We shall never 
forget that evening, for the rare intellectual treat was 
enhanced by the genial humor and charming cordiality of 
the reader.' 

I must not close this sketch without referring to Dr. 
Hancock's deep devotion to his work. He was, in a 
broad sense, a consecrated man. What is consecration 
but a holding one's self sacred, — a setting one's self 
apart to the service of a great cause ? And let us not 
forget that devotion to a great and good cause is ennob- 



REMARKS OF DR. ELLIS, OF HAMILTON. in 

ling to any soul. Our brother had that true nobility of 
soul which attends a consecrated life. 

What an inspiration there is to us all, and more espec- 
ially to the younger members of our profession, in the 
contemplation of such a life I He was a good man, a 
noble man. He served his generation well. He knew 
the secret of choosing the good and rejecting the evil, 
and it is that mainly that makes the difference in the 
lives of men.'* 

Dr. Findley was followed by Dr. R. W. Stevenson, 
Dr. Alston Ellis, Dr. J. J. Burns, and Prof. M. R. 
Andrews, whose words are here reproduced from the 
pages of the Ohio Educational Monthly. 

REMARKS OF DR. ELLIS, OF HAMILTON, OHIO. 

How inadequate are mere words to express the 
emotions ! How cold and pulseless does language seem 
when one would unburden the heart ! ** Man goeth to 
his long home, and the mourners go about the streets." 
These were the words of the wise man, uttered more 
than three thousand years ago, and they voice the 
experience of generations ever since. True it is that 
in the midst of life we are in death. 

" Leaves have their time to fall. 

And flowers to wither at the north wind's breath, 
And stars to set— but all — 
Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death ! " 

A little company of congenial spirits assemble around 
the festive board to enjoy an evening's entertainment. 
The evening is spent in helpful communion. A few 
months go by and the circle is broken ; death has carried 
off one of the shining lights of that company. The 



112 JOHN HANCOCK. 

experience is repeated again and again. Many who are 
near and dear to us are taken away from us. 

It is well to turn aside from the active interests of 
life to pay a tribute of respect and drop a tear to the 
memory of one whom we love. The world goes on its 
way and soon forgets those who have gone before. How 
beautifully Dickens expresses that, when he speaks of 
the death of little Nell ! The little bird was stirring 
nimbly in its cage, while the heart of the child mistress 
was cold in death. 

These breaks in our ranks come to us as a shock, 
but they come to us with lessons that we may learn and 
profit by. Thackeray tells us that in Scotland they have 
a custom of celebrating the birthday of the poet Burns. 
The people come together in a simple manner, and the 
songs of Burns are sung ; and as the music rises, down 
the cheek rolls the tear, and there is a welling up of love 
and fellow-feeling as the words of the poet sink into their 
hearts. Can not something of this feeling be taken with 
us from this meeting when we think of the example left 
us by our departed friend ? Can we not take the lesson 
of his life to heart ? Can we not go away from here 
feeling more and more the kinship which should bind us 
together ? It has been said that one touch of nature 
makes the whole world akin. Is not this a touch of 
nature that should bind us in more loving accord than 
ever before ? The life of Dr. Hancock will not have been 
in vain if we can go out into the world and work more 
faithfully. 

How ineffably contemptible appear all the little spites 
and jealousies and envyings, in the face of death ! When 
I looked upon the face of my dead friend, it seemed to me 
that all the little petty feelings melted away. This 



REMARKS OF DR. R. W. STEVENSON, OF WICHITA. 113 

influence should sink deep into our hearts. Let us go 
away from here remembering what he was, and the 
lessons that his life teaches. Let our sympathies be 
more strongly enlisted toward each other by reason of 
his life and labor here. 

REMARKS OF DR. R. W. STEVENSON, OF WICHITA, 

KANSAS. 

John Hancock died in harness, June i, 1891. In the 
National Educational Association, in educational assem- 
blies, and in the most obscure country districts of the 
State of Ohio, John Hancock will still live in his utter- 
ances, in his noble and Christian character, and in the 
spirit he has infused into all persons with whom he came 
in contact in the work of popular education. 

He was a Buckeye of Buckeyes. He began his career 
as a teacher and educator, — as most successful men have, 
at the lowest round of the ladder, — in an obscure rural 
district, and ended it, as we all know, at the top round of 
honorable promotion in the profession. His advancement 
to the high position he occupied was due to his industry, 
his power as a public speaker, his social nature, his 
hatred of sham and admiration of honesty in all things, 
united with ability of a high order. As a student of litera- 
ture touching every phase of popular education, history, 
philosophy, pedagogy, and the beautiful and good in 
general literature, in prose and poetry, he was a prince 
among schoolmasters. 

Those of us who knew Dr. Hancock intimately as a 
friend, a companion, a counselor, and reached his inner 
nature, know that he was a manly man, an earnest 
Christian gentleman, a great soul, with sympathies which 



114 JOHN HANCOCK. 

led him to assist the unfortunate and exercise charity 
towards those who injured him by word or deed. He 
was ambitious to excel in all that adorned a man in intel- 
lectual and moral culture, that he might be more of a 
man in power and usefulness to humanity. 

For material things he cared little, for during his life 
his subtractions from the salary he earned were nearly 
equal to the additions. Yet he was a prudent man, 
never extravagant, but always generous and beneficent. 
But during his life his character was a continuous 
growth, for he heeded the injunction of the apostle Peter, 
— '' Giving all diligence, add to your faith, virtue; and to 
virtue, knowledge ; and to knowledge, temperance ; and 
to temperance, patience ; and to patience, godliness ; and 
to godliness, brotherly kindness ; and to brotherly kind- 
ness, charity." 

I mourn with a deep sorrow the loss of my intimate 
and trusted friend and brother in the cause of education. 

REMARKS OF PROF. M. R. ANDREWS, MARIETTA, OHIO. 

It is more than twenty years since I first had the 
pleasure to know and to love Dr. Hancock. As a young 
teacher I came to Cincinnati seeking counsel of him. I 
found him in the midst of that noted Bible war ; yet he 
was ready to give me his time, attention and advice. 
Since then I have known him at this Association, and 
personally I have always found him a friend in whom I 
could trust, a brother whom I could love ; and when I 
heard- of his sudden fall in the midst of his duties, it 
seemed to me I was called back again to the years of our 
bitter conflict, and here was another comrade taken from 
our ranks — one who was bearing the colors. I remember 



REMARKS OF DR. J. J. BURNS, OF DAYTON. 115 

that in those days, when our regiment was stretched far 
out, when our ranks were thinned, it was the duty of 
those that were left to draw nearer together, and at the 
same time it drew us nearer to the colors. And so here, 
as we remember with love our fallen brother, may it 
draw us nearer to each other and the great principles 
which he has sustained. 



REMARKS OF DR. J. J. BURNS, CANTON, OHIO. 

My acquaintance with Dr. Hancock reaches back 
twenty-four years from this meeting. I first met him at 
a State Association. During those years I have been 
more or less intimately associated with him, and his life 
and mine have been pretty nearly together on a number 
of occasions. I have been his successor and his prede- 
cessor, his co-worker at institutes, and a guest at his 
house, and I feel that in all these years *' he was my 
friend, faithful and just to me." 

I would not trust myself, without forethought, to give 
any analysis of my estimate of his character, or even to 
give any outline of the many scenes in which he and I 
have been together ; but I can say, and say truly, that 
everything that has been said in his praise and honor 
this afternoon, and those other words so nobly spoken 
with reference to the lessons that we may draw from his 
life and character, and the great fact that we who are 
still living should remember that we must in our turn 
follow him, and the lesson that we may draw as to how 
we who are still on this side of the dark river should treat 
each other — every sentence has struck a responsive 
chord in my heart. 



Ii6 JOHN HANCOCK. 

III. ACTION OF THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF 
EDUCATION. 

Through the courtesy of Dr. Selim H. Peabody, 
President of the National Council of Education, we are 
permitted to give in these pages, in advance of its publi- 
cation in the Proceedings of the National Association, a full 
report of the memorial services in honor of Dr. Hancock, 
delivered in a meeting held at Toronto, Canada, Friday, 
July 10, 1891. 

IN MEMORIAM. 

JOHN HANCOCK, PH. D. 

At the opening of the meeting of the afternoon session 
of Friday, July 10, the President, Dr. Peabody, said : 

FRIENDS IN COUNCIL: — While looking towards the 
preparation of this program, I remember the very earnest 
congratulation which I felt that no member of our body 
had been taken away during the year ; scarcely had the 
feeling gone from me when I received the sad intelligence 
that our beloved and distinguished colleague, John Han- 
cock, of Ohio, had passed away. I may not pronounce 
his eulogy. That duty is reserved for others much more 
competent than myself. He was one whom we all 
rejoiced to meet, whom we would remember with tender 
affection. We have assigned a portion of this session to 
memorial services in his honor, and I have first to call 
upon Mr- White, of Ohio, his nearest colleague, to 
present a tribute to the memory of our deceased friend 
and brother. 

REMARKS OF DR. E. E. WHITE. 

John Hancock was born on one of the hill farms back 
of Point Pleasant, Clermont County, Ohio, — ^the birth- 



REMARKS OF DR. E. E. WHITE. 117 

place of General Grant — on the i8th day of February, 
1825, and he died on the first day of June, 1891, in the 
sixty-seventh year of his age. He was the eldest of five 
children. His father, David Hancock, was born in West- 
ern Pennsylvania, and his grandfather, Henry Hancock, 
was a native of New Jersey. His mother died at the age 
of thirty-five. 

Dr. Hancock spent his childhood and youth on the 
farm, receiving his early education in the district school. 
In his later years he often referred with gratitude to one 
of his early teachers, who awoke in him a desire for 
reading and a taste for good books. At the age of nine- 
teen, Mr. Hancock taught his first school, and, during the 
four succeeding years, he taught school in the winter, 
and, in the intervening months, supplemented farm work 
by study, under the private tuition of Mr. James K. 
Parker, Principal of the Clermont Academy. 

In 1850 Dr. Joseph Ray, of Cincinnati, met Mr. 
Hancock at a teachers' gathering in Clermont County, 
and, on Dr. Ray's recommendation, he was elected first 
assistant in what was then known as the Upper Race 
Street School, Cincinnati, Mr. Andrew J. Rickoff being 
the principal. Here Dr. Hancock began his real life 
work. He used with alacrity the opportunities for self- 
improvement which the city afforded. He continued his 
studies, joined scientific and literary clubs, and other- 
wise widened his scholastic and literary attainments. 
The habit of reading thus formed followed him through 
life. It is but a few months since the writer heard him 
say playfully that he was then reading **two miles of 
Shakespeare daily " in the street car on his way to and 
from his office. In 1856 the honorary degree of Master of 
Arts was conferred on him by Kenyon College, and in 



Ii8 JOHN HANCOCK. 

1876 the honorary degree of Doctor of Philosophy by the 
University of Wooster. 

On Mr. Rickoff' s election as Superintendent of Schools 
in 1853, Mr. Hancock became principal of the Race Street 
School, and a year later he became principal of the new 
First Intermediate School, a position which he filled for 
ten years. Mr. Hancock's work as assistant and princi- 
pal did much to shape early instruction in the Cincinnati 
Schools, and in these years he won a high reputation as a 
teacher and manager. 

In 1864 he resigned the principalship of the First 
Intermediate School to accept a position in Nelson's 
Business College. He was attracted to the position not 
only by the increased salary, but chiefly by the coveted 
opportunity for literary work as editor of ''The News 
and Educator," a new and bright newspaper which Mr. 
Nelson was then publishing. Mr. Hancock's work as 
editor showed thiDse literary resources which his later 
life so fully disclosed. He filled this position nearly two 
years and then accepted the duties of assistant in the 
editor's department of the publishing house of Sargent, 
Wilson & Hinkle, Cincinnati. 

A year later he turned away from literary work to 
accept the superintendency of the Cincinnati Schools— a 
position for which his previous training had been an 
excellent preparation. He filled this responsible position 
for seven years, to the high satisfaction of all interested 
in public education. He introduced few marked changes 
in school organization or instruction, but he strengthened 
the best features, increased the attention given to literary 
culture, quickened the professional spirit of the teachers, 
and gave emphasis to all those elements of discipline and 
instruction that make true and manly pupils. In the 



REMARKS OF DR. E. £. WHITE tig 

seventh year of his efficient administration, party politics, 
for the first time in the history of the schools, entered 
into the election of superintendent, and Dr. Hancock was 
retired. 

He next accepted the superintendency of the public 
school of Dayton, Ohio, filling the office with great 
fidelity and efficiency for a period of ten years. It was 
here that Superintendent Hancock seemed to recognize 
more fully than before the fact that all true instruction 
emanates from the individual teacher, and, while he 
called for good results, he gave the teachers larger free- 
dom in their work, and as a result, there was less of 
mechanism and more of individual influence and power 
in the schools. He stepped down from this place of 
great usefulness at the demand of party politics, while 
all who knew aught of his work in the schools, bore 
enthusiastic testimony to his efficiency as a superinten- 
dent and his high character as a man. 

In 1886, Dr. Hancock took charge, by State appoint- 
ment, of the Ohio education exhibit in the World's Fair 
at New Orleans, and on his return, he accepted the 
superintendency of the public schools of Chillicothe, to 
which he had been unanimously chosen. He filled the 
position with high satisfaction until November, 1888, 
when, in response to the wishes of the leading educators 
of Ohio, he was appointed, by the Governor, State Com- 
missioner of Common Schools, to fill the vacancy caused 
by the death of Dr. Eli T. Tappan. He accepted the 
position, though it involved considerable pecuniary sacri- 
fice, and entered with zeal upon what proved to be his 
final work. He filled the unexpired term, and in July, 
1890, entered upon a full term, having been elected by 
a popular vote that happily attested the people's recogni- 



120 JOHN HANCOCK. 

tion of his high qualifications and efficiency. In his first 
term he successfully inaugurated the new compulsory 
system, and in his second he secured amendments to the 
compulsory law, which greatly increased its efficiency. 

On Monday morning June i, 1891, he entered his 
office, and, greeting his assistants in his usual cheerful 
manner, took his seat at his desk to attend to corre- 
spondence. He had written only a few letters when he 
was stricken with paralysis, and without a word or sign, 
passed from his earthly service to the heavenly reward. 
He left a devoted wife and five worthy children, a 
daughter and four sons. 

Dr. Hancock devoted more than forty years to public 
education in his native state, and during most of these 
years, he took a prominent part in all important efforts to 
improve its educational policy. He was an early and 
earnest advocate of normal training, county supervision, 
the township system, and other measures of school 
progress. He served as a member of the State Board of 
Examiners, as a trustee of the McNeely Normal School — 
an institution founded by the late Cyrus McNeely, and by 
him entrusted to the direction of the State Teachers' 
Association — and also of the Ohio University at Athens, 
taking an active part in the establishment of the Normal 
Department therein. He was early in the institute 
work in the State, and long served as an instructor, 
few men receiving a more appreciative hearing. As 
early as 1852, he became a member of the Ohio Teach- 
ers* Association, in 1859 its president, and earlier or later 
filled nearly every position of responsibility in its gift. 

Nor were Dr. Hancock's interest and efforts in behalf 
of education confined to his native State. He became a 
member of the National Educational Association, then 



REMARKS OF DR. E. E. WHITE. 121 

called the National Teachers' Association, at the first 
regular meeting held in Cincinnati in 1858. He was 
present at all the subsequent meetings — possibly with one, 
at most two exceptions — and always took an active part 
in the proceedings. He presided with great acceptance 
at the eighteenth annual meeting, held in Philadelphia in 
1879, and before and since filled other important official 
positions in the Association with marked fidelity. He 
never sought honor or preferment in the Association, but 
he filled every position to which he was assigned by his 
fellow members with honor and success. 

But it is not Dr. Hancock's official services in the 
Association that should be most gratefully remembered, 
but his earnest devotion to its interests as a member. In 
the times that tried men's pockets, so distinctly remem- 
bered, he loyally sustained the Association not only by 
his presence and service, but by his means. He enjoyed 
the meetings and was always an attentive and discrimi- 
nating listener. In all the history of the Association, 
Dr. Hancock has been one of its leading and most influ- 
ential members. He specially enjoyed the meeting of 
old friends at these annual gatherings, and his good 
cheer, genial wit, generous sympathy, and warm friend- 
ship, always secured for him a hearty welcome. 

Dr. Hancock was present at the preliminary meeting 
for the organization of this Council, held in Chautauqua 
in 1880, and his name is in the roll of its first members. 
He was elected a member of the first executive com- 
mittee, and he subsequently served the Council on 
several other important committees. He was present at 
every meeting of the Council held, certainly since 1881,* 

* The Secretary's Minutes do not include his name in the list of 
members present at the first regular meeting in Atlanta in 1881. 



122 JOHN HANCOCK. 

and was in his place at nearly every day's session. It need 
not be added in this presence, that no other member has 
shown greater personal interest in the wellfare of the 
Council, and that few, if any, have more frequently or 
intelligently participated in its discussions. The annual 
volumes of proceedings contain several reports and papers 
prepared by him — the last and probably the best (on 
"Coeducation") being presented at the last annual 
meeting in St. Paul. At the Nashville meeting in 1889, 
he read an admirable tribute to the memory of the 
lamented Dr. Tappan. 

At this meeting of the Council, we all sadly miss the 
familiar form and voice of our departed associate. We 
find ourselves waiting unconsciously for his entrance, as 
of old, but he comes not, and will not come again ; but 
his memory will long be green here. As the members 
of this body shall in the future gather at its annual 
council fires, memory will lovingly recall the genial 
humor, the earnest words, and the noble spirit of our 
lamented brother. 

It is difficult to present in a few sentences a just esti- 
mate of Dr. Hancock's ability and character. He was 
endowed with an acute and versatile mind, and also with 
an earnest desire for knowledge, and these qualities 
made a broad self-education possible. He not only read 
widely and thoughtfully, but he improved every oppor- 
tunity to widen his attainments He was an earnest 
student of education, but was more interested in its prac- 
tical than in its speculative phases. He was an alert 
and discriminating reader and listener, quickly seizing 
the more salient points of a writer or speaker and seeing 
their practical import and bearing. This quality and 



REMARKS OF DR. E. E. WHITE. 12? 

habit made him ready as a speaker, especially in conver- 
sation and discussion. 

But John Hancock's noblest characteristic was his 
high moral purpose and life. His personal habits were 
not only above criticism, but he was the soul of purity 
and honor and rectitude. Neither his character nor his 
word needed an indorser. He not only hated self-seek- 
ing, trickery, and double-dealing in others, but was 
himself incapable of indirection and subterfuge. He 
admired professional courtesy and honor, was true to his 
friends, and just and generous to those with whom he 
differed ; and no educator in Ohio had more friends and 
fewer enemies than he. 

Dr. Hancock was in the best sense a manly man, and 
his influence and sympathies were always with the right 
as he saw the right. He had a deep reverence for 
sacred things and a deepening religious faith. A few 
years before his death he made a public profession of 
religion, uniting with the Broad Street Presbyterian 
Church of Columbus. As he wrote of the noble Tap- 
pan, Johh Hancock was '' not only upright, but he was 
uprightness itself." 

In the past few years death has been busy among the 
Ohio members of this Council. Four of the original 
members from the State have been called to a higher 
service — W. D. Henkle, I. W. Andrews, Eli T. Tappan, 
and John Hancock, all men of blessed memory ; men 
who were an honor to the noble Commonwealth which 
they served ; men who represented its ripest scholarship, 
its highest character, and its best service in the cause of 
education. 



124 JOHN HANCOCK. 

Mr. Rickoff referred to the tender relations which 
had subsisted between himself and the deceased as fellow- 
teachers, members of the little club for the study of 
psychology, and of the Round Table for years, then the 
intimate correspondence that followed : " I have lost one 
whose loss seems to remind me of the end of all things. 
Mr. Hancock was always true as the needle to the pole — 
hearty, earnest, sturdy in the maintenance of these 
principles, which were lofty." 

Dr. Harris said : — I remember meeting Mr. Hancock 
for the first time at Cleveland, Ohio. The National 
Association met there in 1870. I was greatly attracted 
to him from the first. He was always entertaining, and 
chaffed his friends with the most delicate quality of good 
humor. When the school superintendents of the west- 
ern cities — Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, 
Detroit, Indianapolis and St. Louis — formed their ** Round 
Table," holding their annual meeting in one or another 
of these cities and discussing, informally, the peculiarities 
found to exist in the educational system under inspection, 
Mr. Hancock was ever a central figure, full of thoughtful 
suggestions of his own, and generously appreciative of the 
views and achievements of others. He possessed a great 
heart — a man of humanity and a lover of the humanities. 
By the humanities we understand, technically, the studies 
that cluster around literature as a center. Mr. Hancock 
was especially a lover of good literature. I think that he 
drew his best inspiration for his educational work from 
the great poets and prose writers; and it was a fine inspira- 
tion that he derived from that source and communicated 
to others. Mr. Hancock was an ardent optimist, always 
looking to the future for better things than have been 
achieved in the past, and yet he never undervalued the 



REMARKS OF MR. ALLYN. 125 

past. His optimism and his kindheartedness towards 
everybody, his love of literature and the aspiration 
kindled by its study, fitted him peculiarly for seeing the 
possibilities in school education, and made him a choice 
guide for a corps of teachers, and an ideal manager of a 
system of schools. In this Council of Education there 
rests upon us at this time a feeling of bereavement. We 
have lost a fellow member endeared to us by strong 
personal ties — a friend and a brother. 

Mr. ALLYN : — I became acquainted with Mr. Hancock 
in the winter of 1857-8 in Columbus, Ohio, at the 
Annual Meeting of the Ohio State Teachers' Association, 
a noble body of men, among whom were Lorin Andrews, 
James Garfield, John Canfield, Israel Andrews, Eli 
Tappan and Wm. Henkle, all now in the better land. 
Mr. Hancock at once attracted me by the frank friendli- 
ness of his manner, the vivacity of his spirit, and the 
earnestness of his advocacy of his convictions. And 
when later I removed to Cincinnati, where he was teach- 
ing, we grew intimate friends. We were fellow members 
of the little club already referred to, and I recall, as an 
illustration of what has been said of his purity of mind, 
this incident : One of our members was particularly fond 
of the writings of Swift, and would once in a while read 
passages from them. On one occasion, he read one of 
the most indecorous parts. It would have rejoiced any 
pure mind to see the look of Mr. Hancock's face as the 
reading ended, and his severe silence when it was 
expected that the laughter would come in. That man 
never attempted another such reading. Mr. Hancock 
was a man of sturdy common-sense honesty, and he 
was as genial as he was honest. He drew to himself 



126 JOHN HANCOCK. 

children and young people, and especially boys, — with 
whom he was always a favorite. My son was a pupil in 
his school, and to-day John Hancock is his ideal of a 
perfect man and a gentleman. 

Mr. Hinsdale: — The deceased was remarkable for 
the good cheer which he carried into all circles in which 
he mingled. At St. Paul, last year, all who saw him 
must have remarked the fine condition in which Mr. 
Hancock appeared to be, both in body and spirits. It 
was remarked in my hearing that the paper which he 
read at that meeting was the best he had ever read in the 
Association. In his last conversation he spoke of his 
sound health, remarking that he **was made of iron," 
that he was never sick, and could read without glasses at 
sixty-five. 

Mr. Brown, talking from the standpoint of one of 
the boys whom he helped, said : — 1 desire to testify to the 
excellent service that Mr. Hancock did to the younger 
men of the profession. I knew him first in 1857, when I 
visited his school in Cincinnati, to learn something about 
school-teaching as it was done there ; and I shall never 
cease to be grateful to him for the service he did me as a 
boy in explaining fully everything that was done in his 
school, and why he did it. During the half day I spent 
with him, I think the subject of education was opened to 
me as I had never seen it before. His exceeding kind- 
ness won my affection at once. Afterwards my intimacy 
with him, both in correspondence and the discussion of 
school matters, was close, and for a short time I was a 
member of the Round Table of which the gentlemen have 
spoken. It seems to me that the strength of Mr. 
Hancock was his sterling character. 



REMARKS OF MR. PEABODY. 127 

The President -. — We have presented our homage 
over the grave of our deceased brother. We hang our 
garlands upon his monument. The hour has been one of 
interest, and another hour might be spent in repeating 
and reenforcing the thoughts that have been presented in 
regard to him ; but other duties demand our attention, 
and unless there be some special message, we shall con- 
sider this service as complete. 




SELECTIONS 



FROM 



John Hancock's Writings. 



A PLACE OF SOLEMN DELIGHT. 

What a delightful yet solemn place is a great library. 

NOT TOO CONSERVATIVE. 

I am not such a conservative as that mentioned by 
Sidney Smith, who refused to look at the new moon on 
account of the regard he entertained for that ancient and 
respectable institution, the old one. 

IGNORANCE IS POWER. 

If knowledge is power, ignorance is power also ; and 
there must be an '* irrepressible conflict" between the 
two. 

ONE SECRET OF SUCCESS. 

It is related that when one of the Massachusetts 
regiments stopped in New York on its way to the 
defence of the National Capital, the first thing each 
soldier did after encamping, was to sit down and write a 
letter home. Therein is the secret of our success. Our 
boys know how to read and write. 



130 



JOHN HANCOCK. 



A NATION'S POWER COMPUTED. 

To find the solid contents of a nation's power is a 
very simple sum in arithmetic. We have but to multi- 
ply the breadth of its education by its height, and we 
have the correct result. 

NATURAL ABILITY VERSUS EDUCATION. 

It would be amusing, were it not almost pathetic, to 
observe the dazed discomfiture of those whose reliance is 
on natural ability when they have been made to feel 
how weak and vain is such ability when brought into 
opposition with full information and long and severe 
training. 

KNOWLEDGE AND MODESTY. 

Great learning tends to great humility. 

TEACH HOW TO TALK. 

Children should be taught to talk as though their suc- 
cess in life depended on it — ^for success in life does depend 
on it. 

GREAT THINKERS UTTER THEMSELVES. 

The great thinkers of the world, so far as we can 
find out, have been those who have been talkers either 
with tongue or pen. 

DON'T BE TOO SERIOUS. 

If we had no talk but what is termed serious, society 
would become a burden too great to be borne. 

A FULL COMPENSATION. 

Why, to be rid of a whole world full of foolish talk, 
would not tempt me to give up the wise sayings in Herr 
Teufelsdrockh's talk on clothes in Sartor Resartus. 



SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 131 

FIGHTING TALK. 

Let US condemn senseless babble in the severest 
terms, but let us not forget that a certain amount of 
talk — earnest talk, fighting talk — must always pre- 
cede action. 

THE TRUE PREACHER PLAIN-SPOKEN. 

The true preacher has opinions, and pretty decided 
ones; and opinions, especially if they be decided, are 
not fashionable. He, like John the Baptist and the 
Master, is apt to call men and sins by their right 
names,— to talk of generations of vipers, of hypocrites, 
and to inquire how they expect to escape the damnation 
of hell ; all of which is excessively impolite^ and grates 
on ears refined. 

THE TEACHER A REFORMER. 

The teacher is your true reformer. He, with patient 
labor, fashions the coming ages. All reform that is not 
of his work is transitory and uncertain. Intemperance, 
cruelty, and all kinds of immorality will continue until a 
better heart and mind have been formed in the people. 
And whose work but yours. Teachers, is it to begin this 
reform ? 

THE TRUE TEACHER AN INSPIRER. 

The true teacher implants in the minds of his pupils 
some of that enthusiasm for knowledge and love for 
what is good and great in thought and action, that dwell 
in his own mind and heart ; and what is more difficult, he 
teaches them to feel a portion of that scorn and con- 
tempt for all that is low and mean that he himself feels. 

GREAT MEN THE PRODUCT OF THEIR TIMES. 

We read of men, giant in intellect, who have con- 
trolled and directed the thought of their age ; but with a 



132 JOHN HANCOCK. 

deeper philosophy, we see that this is not true, — ^that 
these men themselves were but the product of the great 
current of thought that runs through that age ; overtop- 
ping their fellows, it may be, like a monster wave riding 
high above the general level, yet having its base on the 
great ocean below. 

THE SCHOOL SYSTEM BASED ON SOCIAL EQUALITY. 

The public School system is founded on the same 
truth that lies at the base of the Christian religion, — the 
equality of men. It opens up to the poor, hopes and 
aspirations that never before attached themselves to their 
hard lot. While it is emphatically the poor man's 
friend, the rich also are glad to avail themselves of those 
advantages which no private school, however well con- 
ducted, can afford. Sitting at the same desks, reciting in 
the same classes, striving for the same prizes, governed 
by the same rules, such friendships and kindly feelings 
are formed among schoolmates that no succeeding social 
distinctions of life can wholly eradicate. The poor boy 
who works nights, mornings and Saturdays for his board, 
but stands head of his class, holds a much higher place in 
the estimation of his fellow pupils, than the wealthy 
leather-head whose place is at the foot. Indeed I know 
of no place on earth where one is so nearly estimated for 
what he really is, as in the public school. No fmery of 
dress, no airs of assumed superiority, can throw dust 
into the exceedingly wide-awake young eyes of its little 
community. It humbles the proud and elevates the 
humble. I think it almost impossible that any marked 
caste distinctions should arise in a society whose culture 
is obtained from the one common source, — a system of 
public instruction. 



SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 133 

THE LOWLY LABORER. 

There yet remains to be mentioned the great mass of 
laborers, who are neither farmers nor mechanics ; and 
the objector will ask, What is the use of the higher 
education to them, except to make them discontented 
with their lot ? I must confess to you that these people 
in their lowly condition interest me profoundly, and, as 
being of them, my heart is filled with irrepressible long- 
ings for their advancement in everything that may 
pertain to their physical comfort and mental elevation ; 
and I rejoice with great gladness when one of the sons 
of the people escapes from the narrow environment of 
his ignorance into the broad light of knowledge. How 
many a boy have I seen thus mount to the plane of a 
higher life, and draw his whole family up after him. 

TRIBUTE TO SOME LECTURERS. 

Who has heard the silver-haired Horace Mann deliver 
his " Address to Young Men," in his nervous and impres- 
sive manner, and not felt, struggling within, a holy desire 
for that pure and noble life portrayed with such solemn 
earnestness by the speaker, who had consecrated his high 
powers to that greatest of all causes, the cause of uni- 
versal education ? And what new thoughts have been 
wakened by the subtle disquisitions of Emerson, and the 
broad generalizations of Theodore Parker ! What pleas* 
ures have been enjoyed while listening to the classic 
periods of the scholarly Everett! With what delight 
have we heard the most unpretentious and perhaps 
greatest of American orators, the brave, the radical, the 
impracticable, the golden-mouthed Wendell Phillips ! 
Besides, there was him of rich and genial fancy, whose 
mellifluous speech ran on with the musical murmer of the 



134 JOHN HANCOCK. 

summer brook, — whose soul \yas in loving harmony with 
all that is beautiful in nature, literature and art, — Thomas 
Starr King. And Henry Ward Beecher, too, both thinker 
and orator, and the most popular speaker of them all ; 
grave, humorous or pathetic, as suited his mood. 

OHIO'S SMALL COLLEGES. 

Two or three summers ago, at the meeting of the 
National Educational Association at Detroit, a distin- 
guished educator, in an address advocating State universi- 
ties, took occasion to speak in slighting terms of Ohio's 
small colleges. Now, I believe in State universities, and 
it is humiliating to every citizen of the leading State of 
the Mississippi Valley that we have no great State 
university ; and still more humiliating has been the 
mean and niggardly policy our State has pursued towards 
the two universities she does possess, and which she is 
bound by her honor and her interests to sustain and 
foster. I must, however, confess that I do not share in 
the prejudices against small colleges manifested by the 
speaker referred to. Let us have large colleges by all 
means, if we have the wherewithal to build them up ; 
but small colleges are not in themselves by any means 
evil things ; and I here venture the opinion that some of 
our small colleges are doing as good work in all the essen- 
tials of a solid education as many of the large ones, with 
all their boasted advantages. Bricks and mortar, and 
apparatus and libraries, and great endowments can not 
make a great institution of learning. It is the men at 
their head, and the amount and quality of heart and 
brain force they put into their work that do this. It is 
not the colleges which put forth the longest catalogues, 
but those which get the most earnest work out of their 



SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 135 

students that are entitled to the highest consideration. 
There is another excuse — if that is the proper word to 
use — for the existence of small colleges. Wherever an 
institution of higher learning is planted, there immediately 
begins to grow up, in all the surrounding region, an 
increasing desire on the part of the boys to go to college, 
and many do go who would never have done so had it 
not been for the stimulating influence of a college in the 
neighborhood. Now we have a great many small colleges 
in Ohio, more I believe than has any other State, and 
I am glad — in the absence of large ones, and would be in 
their company, if we had them — ^that it is so. So many 
more colleges, so many more circles of influence for the 
higher education ; and every additional young man 
drawn into college may be counted as so much clear gain 
to the community, in the way of power and good citizen- 
ship. But my advocacy for small colleges is limited by 
one inexorable condition, and that is, that they shall do 
genuine college work ; no letting down the standard of 
scholarship to secure numbers; no promises of learning to 
be obtained in the know-everything-in-six-easy-lessons 
way. I know of no reprobation too severe for those 
institutions, claiming to be colleges, which deceive those 
who trust to their claims and send them out into the 
world with the belief that they are educated, but much 
fuller of conceit than knowledge. 

A CHANCE FOR ALL CHILDREN. 

In this new education, which,— if we are worthy of 
it, — will reign among us at no very distant day, all — high 
and low, rich and poor — will receive according to their 
several necessities a due portion. There is nothing that 
stirs my indignation more than the oft-recurring talk 



136 JOHN HANCOCK. 

which professional and literary men and capitalists — 
men who have never done a day's physical labor in their 
lives — condescendingly hand down to the common 
people, as nuggets of purest wisdom, through our leading 
magazines, at ten dollars a page, setting forth the danger 
of educating laboring men out of their sphere. Why, the 
American child has no special sphere. When he is born, 
all worlds of endeavor lie open to him, from which he 
may choose, well or ill ; but the responsibility is his, and 
that of no other creature in God's universe. To repro- 
duce the thought of one of the leading educators of our 
country : The one way to elevate the ignorant and dis- 
contented laborer is ever to keep in his sight the open 
door by which he may escape into a place of higher 
living and thinking ; and, I may add, anathemas be upon 
them who would attempt to shut that door in his face. 

TEACHERS MUST FACE CRITICISM. 

Teachers are peculiarly sensitive to the criticism of 
our school systems and methods by non-professionals. It 
is true that much of this criticism is unreasonable, and 
some of it ill-natured ; but a not inconsiderable portion 
of it is well-founded, and out of this portion much of the 
progress we make grows. We may ask that our schools 
be let alone ; but they will not be let alone, and we have 
no right to expect it, for there is no other public institu- 
tion of our country in which so many people have an 
interest. They will, therefore, be pried into on every 
side by numberless eyes, and we must bear, with what 
patience we may, the unjust attacks made upon our- 
selves and our work for the sake of the valuable hints 
to be found, from time to time, in what Carlyle would 
call a heap of *' clotted-nonsense.'* 



SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 137 

EDUCATION FOR EVERYBODY. 

I have but little sympathy with those who are 
afflicted with the sad fear that if all are educated there 
will be no one left to perform the manual labor of the 
world. Besides, if it were once settled that ignorance 
was always to be linked to that kind of labor, there 
would be small blame for those who should strive to 
escape it. For my part, I believe in no such necessity ; 
and if such a doctrine ever becomes recognized and 
acted upon in our country, society will stratify itself on 
the most odious of all caste distinctions, — ^that of rich 
and poor, — and the laboring population sink to the condi- 
tion of ignorant, hopeless serfdom. Moreover, drudging 
labor is being rapidly abolished. By means of the steam 
engine more than half of the world's burden of labor 
has been transferred from muscles of flesh to muscles of 
iron, and more than one-half of the remainder is per- 
formed by labor-saving machines, the motive power of 
which is other than steam ; and we shall, in an accel- 
erated ratio, be constantly whittling down the small frac- 
tion that is left, — so that it is no wild outburst of a 
baseless enthusiasm to predict that all the drudgery of 
life will be done, at no very distant day, by machinery, 
and that man's only part in it will be to stand by with a 
thinking brain to direct its forces. At any rate, if all 
the community were educated, its work would readily 
adjust itself to such a basis. The men of greatest 
powers and attainments would take the leading part in 
affairs, as now ; the next strongest the next places, and 
so on downward. There is, however, a great work to 
be done by scholars in this country. Upon them, more 
than upon any other class of the community, depends 
the duty of directing the thought and sentiment of our 



138 JOHN HANCOCK. 

people into a channel more in accordance with our repub- 
lican institutions. They should assert the dignity of 
their pursuits, and at the same time assert the dignity of 
humanity, persuading all men that they " ought not rest 
in the use of slender accomplishments." They should 
show that the highest culture is not inconsistent with 
the humblest occupations ; that wherever there is room 
for honest work of any kind, there is a field for the dis- 
play of the best trained powers. Paul, one of the 
grandest characters the world has produced, with all his 
learning, declared with a proud humility of genuine 
independence and manliness, that he had supported him- 
self, and contributed to the support of others, by the 
humblest manual toil. 

Believing as I do that that higher education which 
touches and rouses all that is best in the intellectual, 
moral, and spiritual nature of man, to be of transcen- 
dent worth, yet I am, I trust, no foolish optimist. 
Education, however profound or extended, will not reform 
the world at once, — perhaps altogether, never. There 
will always be errors to combat, and wrongs to redress ; 
but he who appeals to a cultivated people has a vantage 
ground of incalculable value. We shall never achieve 
great things unless we work to a high ideal ; — and this is 
a truth young men just starting out into the world, with 
high hopes and aspirations can not treasure too sacredly. 
We shall not soon, if ever, have our whole population 
trained into the higher culture — ^for there may be some 
incapable of it — but we can make inroads into the 
enemy's country, and gradually enlarge the boundaries of 
this kingdom of high-living and high-thinking. To do 
this, all should join hands — public school men and 
private school men— to fill our colleges with recruits. 



SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 139 

There should be no jealousies between denominational 
and State institutions, but all work together to a common 
end. Let there be no egotism, either, on the part of col- 
lege graduates ; for not all are liberally educated who 
have received a diploma, — nor are all who have failed of 
a college training wanting in culture. A great scholar is 
to be reverenced everywhere. **His successes are 
the occassions of the purest joy to all men. Eyes he is 
to the blind ; feet is he to the lame." 

THE OLD-TIME SCHOOLMASTER. 

[REMINISCENCES.] 

The old-fashiohed schoolmasters verified the truth of 
that line they so often set as a copy to young aspirants 
in the chirographic line, — ^for they were most certainly 
*'many men of many minds." The earliest crop was 
largely of foreign birth, the Irish predominating. Much 
learning had not made them mad ; but much learning 
was not required. To be able to spell pretty correctly, 
to know the Arithmetic to the ''single rule of three, " 
and to write a good hand were deemed sufficient in 
most districts. The last named branch was always 
made the most of; and the article of agreement, which 
was always known by the first word of the name, was 
not infrequently made to shine forth as a resplendent 
work of art, in all the glory of mighty capitals and 
amazing and complicated flourishes. This *' Article, " as 
it was carried from house to house in search of sub- 
scribers (for the free school fund was frequently eked 
out by levying a certain additional sum on each pupil 
enrolled in the school), was carefully scanned, and if 
well done, duly praised throughout the length and 
breadth of the district. And many of the rough 



MO JOHN HANCOCK. 

pioneers, who were not unskilled critics, could them- 
selves, when their fingers were not too much stiffened 
by the use of the ax and the maul, write a hand that 
many a literary gentleman in these degenerate days 
would find it difficult to excel. It was their one accom- 
plishment, and they prided themselves in it. Their 
writing was none of your running, semi-angular kind 
of the Spencerian style, but what an old farmer of the 
time happily described as '*a round square hand." 

As I have said, the ** single rule of three " was gen- 
erally with **ye ancient pedagogue" the ^^ Ultima 
Thule^^ of arithmetic, and the aspiring youth who ven- 
tured beyond, was compelled to tread the thorny paths 
of mathematical knowledge alone. Some of the younger 
and more conceited sort of schoolmasters, who imagined 
they knew a thing or two not written down in the books 
of their fogy colaborers, used to bother the venerable 
heads of the latter by sending them certain stiff '* sums '* 
with a request for a solution. I remember one such 
sum that went the rounds of various schools, and was 
the means of heating up the galvanic batteries (for it is 
thus, my friends, the doctor designates the thinking 
apparatus of man) of many puzzled old polls for a whole 
winter. It ran to the effect that the head of a certain 
fish was so many feet long ; that its tail was as long as 
the head and half the body ; and that the body was as 
long as the head and tail both ; and wound up by enquir- 
ing the whole length of the fish. Whether any one 
found the answer to the question or not, I do not know ; 
but if any one did, I am sure it was done by the neat 
little rule of double position, as mental arithmetic and 
analytical solutions were then unknown. The teacher 
in the adjoining district to ours, after having spent a 



SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 141 

great deal of valuable time on this Sphinx's riddle, 
gave it up, with the declaration that if he never ate any 
more fish until he worked that sum, he should certainly 
depart this life without ever again tasting fish. 

But if the old-time schoolmaster's knowledge was not 
Hamiltonian in its proportions, still he was the foremost 
man in this respect of the people among whom he lived ; 
and if its boundary was narrow, that boundary was 
sharp and well-defined. 

1 must repel as a foul slander, not based upon any 
general facts, the accusation sometimes made that these 
schoolmasters were often the slaves of intemperance. At 
any rate such was not the case within the circle of my 
knowledge. They were, on the contrary, in almost every 
instance, sober, moral and orderly citizens. They were 
sometimes crazy, though ; or, to put it in the milder 
language of the day, **a little touched in the upper 
story." The first and third of my own masters — and we 
changed masters pretty often, one scarcely ever teaching 
more than a quarter in one place — were of this kind. 
But they were both good teachers, and brought us on 
wonderfully. It may be that a little touch of insanity 
contributes to one's success in the profession. The 
eccentricity of the first of these exhibited itself chiefly in 
the way of ingenious devices for the punishment of the 
wicked. A big flat stone placed in the middle of the floor, 
performed duty as the dunce block ; and I think I may 
truly say, this dunce block was never cold during day- 
light hours from the beginning of that school to its close. 
If the occupant was a boy, the oldest, shabbiest and 
flabbiest sunbonnet that could be culled from the varied 
assortment worn to school, covered his head ; or if a girl 
was the occupant, a brimless and crownless hat (and 



142 JOHN HANCOCK. 

there was no trouble in finding such) adorned her fair 
locks; and in either case, a pair of leather spectacles 
assisted the vision of the mischievous young eyes. The 
master had a genius in these spectacles, and he delighted 
himself with the invention of strange and grotesque 
forms for them. But even genius will nod. While he 
confined himself to leather, he trod impossibilities under 
his feet ; but his attempt at a huge pair of wooden ones, 
was a failure ; at which we all rejoiced exceedingly, — in 
a quiet way, of course. 

Soon after the close of his school he one day disap- 
peared from his home without any of the formalities of 
leave-taking, and as the signs of his insanity had been 
for some time growing more and more marked, great was 
the hubbub raised by his family, and the whole neighbor- 
hood was soon engaged in a search for the wanderer. 
Among these was a relative who was the unhappy 
possessor of a divining or mineral rod. By means of this 
mineral rod, in which the owner had never lost faith, 
even under the most trying circumstances, most strange 
and wonderful things had often come near being accom- 
plished. Many a chest, containing as it was believed 
untold sums of gold, buried deep in the earth, had the 
rod, in spite of devils and all other evil spirits that do 
guard such hidden treasure, unerringly pointed out, but 
when the sweating hunters had laboriously dug down to 
the point of actually striking their mattocks on the ringing 
cover of the huge iron box, some unlucky ejaculation, 
let slip in violation of those recondite rules of silence abso- 
lutely necessary to the securing of the coveted treasure, 
would enable the devil and his attendant imps to snatch 
the chest from under the very noses of the diggers, and 
leave nothing in its place but the well-known sulphury 



SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 143 

smell which always attends the proximity of his Satanic 
Majesty. No valuables were ever secured ; but that was 
not the fault of the rod, but of the diggers, who would 
always violate some one of the rules already spoken of as 
essential to the success of their enterprise — or some fear- 
ful sight or ghostly sound, such as mortal eye could not 
look upon or mortal ear listen to unmoved, drove them 
from their undertaking in wild and hasty flight. 

It was this wonderful rod that the relative brought 
forth on this sad occasion ; hoping that it might be as 
effective in pointing out the body of his poor lunatic kins- 
man, — which every one supposed must be lying dead in 
some out-of-the-way place, — as it had been potent in 
revealing hidden treasure. But for once he counted with- 
out his host. The rod made no sign. Like genius, it had 
its specialty, and could not be induced to depart from it. 
The search*continued with constantly failing ardor, for 
nearly two weeks ; but without result. A month or two 
after his sudden disappearance, the man returned, appa- 
rently in his right mind ; but he always maintained a 
determined silence as to where he had been or what he 
had been doing. 

The other schoolmaster to whom I have referred as 
being also ** a little cracked," was a good teacher, and 
of unusual scholarship for the times. He taught the 
summer school, and his oldest pupils were not more than 
twelve. He had that idiosyncrasy that so often accom- 
panies the earlier and milder stages of insanity in scholars 
— an irresistable inclination to use words of learned length 
and thundering sound. He used to lecture us little 
codgers in terms that might well have made an academi- 
cian gape. He also swung the good, limber, sharp beech 
gad with wonderful skill and alarming frequency. To 



144 JOHN HANCOCK. 

me, however, he gave few " lickings," but made up the 
deficit in good advice— which I am sorry to say shared 
the usual fate of that article. Among other things he 
besought me, with tears in his eyes, never to become a 
schoolmaster. The fearful picture of the trials and 
sufferings of that persecuted profession which he held up 
before my boyish vision, you may be quite sure, was 
sufficient to induce me to give the required promise that 1 
wouldn't. 

The closing exercises of his term were striking, and 
not to be easily forgotten. We had, in honor of the 
occasion, with the exception of an anomalous little 
darkey, combed our hair out sleek, and washed our faces 
until they shone again. Expectation stood on tiptoe. 
The master arose. His personnel was not altogether 
fascinating. His clothes were not of the most fashionable 
make. His coat was short, and grown sleek by wear ; 
his pants were short also — much too short to conceal the 
cerulean blue of his home-made yarn socks, — and exceed- 
ingly baggy about the knees. With all our partiality for 
him, we could not make up our minds that he was hand- 
some, nor graceful either. But when, after clearing his 
throat with a vigorous, hem ! and apologizing to us as 
being one not in the habit of public speaking, he spread 
forth his hand in what he doubtless conceived to be the 
manner of Paul before Agrippa, and began to pour forth a 
torrent of huge words, not one in ten of which conveyed 
to our minds the least meaning, Demosthenes himself 
might have envied the wonderful effect he produced on 
his gaping little audience. As for myself, when he 
concluded his remarks by presenting me with a small 
copy of Walker's Dictionary, bound in red leather, for 



SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 145 

having been oftenest head of the spelling class during the 
term, I was tremendously overcome. 

Alas, poor fellow ! I wonder where in the wide earth 
his lot may now be cast. He was as unfitted to battle 
with the world as Sterne's poor Maria. I certainly ought 
not to speak lightly of his great misfortune, nor of him ; 
for he taught me to love reading, and lent me books, 
most of them beyond my years and capacity, but still 
useful in awakening faculties and aspirations that had 
before been largely dormant. Few perhaps realize the 
debt they owe to their teachers, but I would not be 
ungrateful to this harmless, crazy, good-hearted instructor 
of my childhood. 

THE SPELLING SCHOOL. 

Thirty years ago (in those primitive times), spelling 
was the branch of instruction that received most, and in 
some schools almost exclusive, attention. All the 
scholars, in addition to their other regular spelling les- 
sons, spelled twice a day in class — just before dinner, 
and again at night. It was a custom for the teacher to 
permit these two lessons to be studied aloud. No sooner 
was this permission given, than all the noise that had 
been pent up for the day, like a dammed and swollen 
stream, broke forth in one impetuous torrent of mingled 
howls and screams, every scholar yelling out his lesson 
on his own hook, and in his highest key, making the 
little old school-house rock again. 

The spelling was always taught orally ; and a conse- 
quence was, that many who could spell every word in 
the spelling book, in that way, when they came to write, 
blundered on the most common words. It was not sup- 
posed possible, either, that a boy could learn to read until 



146 JOHN HANCOCK. 

he had gone through his speller, at least one or two 
times. Most of the Friday afternoons were spent in a 
spelling match, in which the whole school took part, and 
which often became very exciting. But this excitement 
culminated when such a match was made between two 
schools. In those days, one John C. Smith's schools 
were famous for their proficiency in the noble art under 
consideration. He had long taught in one district, and 
one winter sent forth his challenge to all the regions 
round about to come forth and measure arms with him. 
For a long time no one dared to take up the glove ; but 
finally our district of Franklin, with many misgivings, 
came to the conclusion that this boaster should not 
enjoy the triumphs of the championship without a con- 
test. Jack Tompkins, a nervous, white-haired boy of 
twelve, was Smith's right hand man, in whom he 
reposed unbounded confidence, and the marvellous 
things that Jack could do in the spelling line, was com- 
mon talk, especially among youngsters, ail around the 
country. What Jack couldn't do in bowling down hard, 
knotty, polysyllabic words it was generally believed it 
wasn't worth while for anybody else to attempt. The 
eventful night came ; Smith's best spellers were ranged 
on one side, and an equal number of our picked lads and 
lassies on the other. Every foot of space in the not 
over-roomy log school-house was filled with interested 
spectators. The spelling began at the head ; but alas for 
Smith ! His leader was nervous, and but a few words 
had been out before the invincible Jack went down, and 
the Franklinites won an easy victory. The return 
match resulted in an almost equal discomfiture of the foe, 
and Smith and his boastings disappeared from the arena, 



SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 147 

while the Franklin School for many long years was the 
undisputed orthographical champion. 

The night spelling schools, too, like their half cousins 
the singing schools, combined instruction and amusement 
in a very pleasing way. I know not how it is now, but 
courting in the country was then, as I have been 
informed on satisfactory evidence, a very serious affair, 
and few were bold enough to plunge into it directly, some 
excuse for coming into the presence of the fair sex being 
generally considered indispensable. This excuse the 
spelling school afforded. It was noticed, too, that the 
Captain in a match, unless he was extremely fond of 
honors indeed, always chose the girl he loved best with- 
out reference to her ability as a speller. The pairing off, 
too, on starting for home was a beautiful verification of 
the law of double elective affinity. 

Arithmetic ranked next in importance to spelling. 
Mental arithmetic was of course unknown. Neither 
was ciphering taught. The scholars laboriously grew 
into it by dint of much sweat — and rubbing of the brain- 
pan. The teacher afforded no other assistance than to 
do the *' sum, "(almost always without any explanation) 
for the pupil when the latter found himself as he termed 
if stuck," no attempt being made to understand the 
teacher's work. Many scholars kept what was called a 
ciphering book, in which was copied in the neatest and 
most painstaking manner the work of every example 
performed to the minutest particulars. This afterwards 
became an heirloom in the author's family, and was 
looked on by his descendants as an incontestable proof of 
his immense mental ability. Another thing that made 
the progress of arithmeticians slow was their neglect to 
learn the tables as a preliminary work ; and many a 



148 JOHN HANCOCK. 

student went far into the arithmetic without a knowl- 
edge of the multiplication table. By keeping the book 
open at its page, so as to see what six times six, etc., 
made, without the bother of committing it to memory, 
they managed to get along at a snail's pace to be sure, 
but with a tolerable certainty as to results. 

MANUAL TRAINING. 

What then is the proper work of a system of 
schools? I have no hesitation in maintaining that the 
main purpose of these schools should be to teach youth 
how to obtain information from books, and to form their 
tastes and characters according to a high ideal through 
the same agency. Other instruction should be relegated 
to the home, the church, the workshop, and special 
schools. I do not believe it is practicable or desirable to 
teach sewing, or cooking, or carpentering, or blacksmith- 
ing, or farming in the common schools. These occupa- 
tions can all be far more successfully taught elsewhere. 
Neither do I believe the knowledge of how to handle 
tools to be of such supreme value that our schools, from 
the grammar grades upwards, should be turned into 
workshops; and I am thoroughly convinced that Pro- 
fessor Woodward and others of his way of thinking 
greatly exaggerate that value. 

Yet I would not be thought to be without sympathy 
with this movement ; for though it should not, as I 
think it ought not, become an integral part of our com- 
mon school system, nor accomplish all its sanguine 
friends expect, it will do good. As has been already 
said, the education that makes philosophers is a very 
noble one, yet but a small part of mankind can live on 
philosophy ; and I agree with Professor Woodward that 



SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS, 149 

we should not sacrifice the ninety-nine who do not 
complete our elaborate course of study to the single one 
who does. The mass of men must always be bread- 
winners with their hands; and it will be a great thing 
for the world when these hands shall come to have 
brains in every finger's tip of them. I believe it is well 
that our youth should be familiarized with this destiny 
before they leave school, and be led by training, so far 
as such a thing is practicable, to look forward to a life of 
manual labor, not as something to be avoided at almost 
any sacrifice and hazard, but to be embraced with glad- 
ness, as worthy of those possessed of high attainments. 
If we shall fail in this country to get this done by some 
means, in just so much shall we fail in our peculiar insti- 
tutions and natural life. To bring this about, we should 
multiply manual training schools for the benefit of 
youth who may have completed the grammar school 
course, or even for grades below, if experience should 
prove it to be desirable. 

THE THINKING FARMER. 

Independence is one of the first requisites to true 
manliness ; and no one on the round earth has so much of 
it as the farmer; and if he is not the most intelligent of 
men, it is his own fault. A position between two plow 
handles, 'with a good team in front, is one of the most 
favorable for study that 1 can conceive of; it gives the 
two most essential conditions for thinking: isolation and 
repose of mind. There one can take up any subject of 
study in the morning, with the certainty that he shall 
have the whole day to turn it over in his mind, and view 
it in every possible light, without the apprehension of 
having his train of thought broken by some purposeless 



I50 JOHN HANCOCK. 

visitor. The oxygen of the open air keeps the brain 
supplied with pure blood, and the whole frame filled with 
exhilarating nerve force. A day of such study ought to 
be more fruitful of solid results than two days passed in 
the close atmosphere of a library. 

The book of nature lies always open to the farmer's 
eye, but the misfortune is he has not been taught to ''see 
through the spectacles of books," as Dryden has it, and 
is blind to all Nature's beauties and delights. But 
anoint his eyes with the euphrasy of knowledge, and he 
shall fmd in the growth of plants, in the variety and 
habits of insects and birds, matter of study to meet the 
demands of the most enthusiastic botanist or naturalist ; 
in the analysis of his soil, work for a skillful chemist; 
and in the rocks beneath it, a great book on whose stony 
leaves the fmger of God has written the history of crea- 
tion. The sparkling dewdrops, — a radiant gem in every 
leaf, — ^the rosy tints of aurora, the crimson evening sky 
with golden bars, — an enchanting picture on the Creator's 
wide-spread canvas, — delight his sight with ever-recur- 
ring beauties. And the low of kine and the songs of 
birds greet his ear with exquisite music , thus completing 
the circle of his innocent pleasures. Then come on the 
long and peaceful winter nights, following days the 
labors of which have been just sufficient to awaken a 
healtey glow and keep the blood in circulation ; nights to 
which the society of noble books lend an ever-renewed 
charm. If he be a classicist, he can take down his Homer 
or Virgil, and renew the vigor of his schoolday-thinking 
by communion with these grandfathers, as it were, of 
human culture. Or he reads some new work on science, 
and thus keeps pace with those investigations which are 
pushing themselves out into the remotest corners of the 



SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. I^I 

universe. Or he may — best of all, perhaps — comfort 
and build himself up by reading the classics of his own 
language. Don't tell me there is no place in the 
farmer's life for the higher education ! No life needs it so 
much. He is more cut off from associating with his 
fellows than most men, and is consequently more thrown 
on his own resources for his mental pleasures ; and if he 
start without the advantages of a good education, he is 
apt to fall into narrow ways of thinking, and suffer his 
mind to rust out, after a most deplorable fashion. 1 do 
not mean to say the masses of farmers have yet attained 
to the ideal life I have just attempted to sketch, — and 
sorry am I that I can not say it, — but 1 trust I have not 
altogether failed in pointing out the possibilities of such a 
life to him who brings to this vocation an education which 
will fit him for the highest rational enjoyments ; and that 
if he fails in reaching this ideal, the fault does not lie in 
his occupation but in himself. 

MASON DOAN PARKER.* 

Friend White :— An old friend of yours— a brother 
to me — has gone to the better land. Mason D. Parker 
died on the 29th of March. Not only to your heart, but 
to hearts in every part of the State, I know this 
announcement will send a pang of grief, — for none knew 
him but to love him. 

In obedience to a request of the teachers of Cincin- 
nati, and the dictates of my own fef lings, I send you a 
sketch of the life and character of our departed brother. 
Notwithstanding he was the playmate of my childish 
years, and my companion in manhood, I would not por- 
tray his character in high toned colors, but with that 
rigid adherence to truth which would, if he were living, 

* Written in 1865. 



1S2 John HANCock^ 

be most gratifying to his own modest nature : yet I feel 
that none but a loving hand ought to paint the quiet, 
useful life, and the pure, tender heart of this faithful 
schoolmaster. 

Mason Doan Parker was born in Clermont County, 
Ohio, in the year 1828. He received his education in an 
academy established on his father's farm twenty-five 
years ago, and of which his oldest brother has been Prin- 
cipal from its foundation. His father was a man of 
strong native powers, which he cultivated by a diligent 
reading; his mother had a taste for literature; and 
almost the sole thought of both was for the education 
of their children. The father was a reformer in the best 
sense of the word, — always among the foremost in good 
works. He was the first public advocate of the temper- 
ance reform in the West ; and was always an uncompro- 
mising anti-slavery man. It was under such guidance 
that the subject of our sketch grew to manhood. He 
fully imbibed his father's principles, and during his 
entire life was a devotee of total abstinence, and an 
earnest hater of oppression. 

In 1849 he removed to Cincinnati, and for two or 
three years was engaged as a clerk in a mercantile 
house. He then commenced his career as a teacher, — 
as an assistant instructor in the Cincinnati House of 
Refuge, which position he filled for about a year. He 
then became connected with our city schools as first 
assistant teacher in the Tenth District. He became, in 
a year or two, the Principal of the same school, and suc- 
cessively of the Sixth District, the Second Intermediate, 
the Eighteenth District, and again of the Second Inter- 
mediate. This last position he filled at the time of his 
death. 



SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK*S WRITINGS. 153 

These changes from school to school were not 
entirely agreeable to him, as, he often remarked, they 
did not give him a fair chance to show the results of his 
working powers ; for he could scarcely get settled into a 
place, and begin to make his influence felt, before he 
was required by the Board to organize a new school. 
But that he was required to do this, was complimentary 
to him, for he was chosen for this kind of work on 
account of his superior executive ability. 

From his entrance into the profession, he interested 
himself in the State Association, and almost at once 
became an active and influential member. He was as 
prompt and careful in discharging the duties pertaining to 
the general success of the cause of education, which were 
from time to time imposed on him, as he was those more 
specially belonging to his school-room. Until last sum- 
mer, I think, he missed but one of our meetings. 

As a teacher, his success was unqualified. He was 
indefatigable and thoroughly conscientious in his labors. 
He not only gave an intellectual assent to the fact that 
his work was the training of immortal souls, but seemed 
to feel it to an extent I have never seen in another. 
Indeed this consciousness seemed, at times, to weigh him 
down by its burden. 

His teaching was broad and genial. All the fine 
powers of his mind were brought into play by it,— his 
accurate knowledge of facts, his discriminating literary 
taste, his airy and brilliant fancy, his warm sympathies, 
and his rich and quaint humor. He was rich in expedi- 
ents in imparting instruction, and had a clear and felicit- 
ous style in presenting a subject. His manner was 
animated and impressive. But his designs reached far 
beyond the mere culture of the intellect. His moral 



154 JOHN HANCOCK. 

teaching was not a matter of theory only, but received as 
careful attention as the several, branches prescribed in 
the course of study for his school. While it was entirely 
free from cant, it was reverent ; deriving its life not from 
precept alone, but from a blameless example. He strove 
in all his teaching to render knowledge attractive, — so 
attractive that the school should be to his pupils the 
pleasantest place in the world. We all remember his 
lecture, delivered before the Association, on The Model 
Teacher. It has often occurred to me, since hearing it, 
that he himself was the best example of his beautiful 
ideal. 

His conscientiousness in regard to the discharge of his 
duties, was almost morbid, and it led him to worry when 
things in his school, did not go exactly as he thought they 
should, to a degree that I think was gradually under- 
mining the tone of a nervous system that was originally 
a very, vigorous one. However this may be, he has his 
reward for his labors in the high regard those whose 
young feet he has led into the pleasant paths of knowl- 
edge will ever entertain for his memory. 

Mr. Parker had literary ability of so high an order 
that, though he had written comparatively little for the 
press, his friends were led to believe that, had he chosen 
literature for his vocation, he would have attained to 
eminence in it. His quick perception of individual traits, 
and his exuberant and fanciful humor were striking, and 
in his pen found a ready and graceful expression. 

But it was most in the capacity of a genial companion 
that our departed friend endeared himself to us all. So 
winning was his way that none could resist it. He com- 
pelled men to love him. In conversation, the play of his 
fancy, of his wit and his humor was constant, and his 



SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 155 

resources inexhaustible. And yet his wit, unless some 
great wrong or mean act were to be impaled, had nothing 
bitter in it. He was the most unselfish man I have ever 
known, — always thoughtful of the comfort and interest of 
others. His courtesy was that of the Christian gentle- 
man, whose manners are based upon the Golden Rule. 

When the National Guards were called out, a year 
ago, he responded to the call with alacrity. He was glad 
to be afforded an opportunity to contribute his mite of 
personal service to the cause of his country. He himself 
thought, as we all thought, that he would, from his 
muscular activity and vigor, be able to endure the priva- 
tions of camp-life better than almost any other member 
of the Teachers' Company. And he did sustain himself 
well until the march the regiment made, about the middle 
of June, from Fort Powhattan to City Point. In that, to 
our surprise, he broke down. He had not yet entirely 
rallied from this, when, shortly after our arrival at Spring 
Hill, on the Appomattox, he had a very severe attack of 
illness, from which he never entirely recovered. He was 
reluctantly forced to give up all heavy duty thereafter. 
He grew weaker from day to day without any well 
defined cause ; and we were seriously afraid, at times, 
that he would never see that home, endeared to him by 
so many precious ties, again. Yet during all this time of 
ill health, his wit and humor never ceased their flow, and 
were the life and talk of the little camp of the two compa- 
nies, which were so long together on detached duty. 

On his return home he felt obliged to resume at once 
the duties of his profession ; and the burden of the man- 
agement of a new school proved too much for the little 
strength he had left. His vital powers gave way under 
the pressure. A nervous fever set in, accompanied by a 



156 JOHN HANCOCK. 

congestion of the lungs. He was so loth to give up, that 
he continued in school long after he should have taken to 
his bed. 

He had but little sound sleep during the whole of his 
last illness; and his talk during his troubled dreams was 
almost entirely of his school. His fevered, restless hand 
would mark out in the empty air the figures and diagrams 
he had so often drawn upon the blackboard in his school- 
room. When awake, his mind at all times was serene 
and cheerful; and the old flashes of humor were not 
infrequent. Though he believed to the last he should 
recover, he talked of death with the peaceful calmness of 
the Christian who has nothing to fear. 

His last words, as his friends stood around his bed, 
his wife's hand clasped in his, were — " I am tired. I 
must sleep now." And gently, as an infant on its 
mother's breast, he fell into that slumber that shall know 
no waking till the resurrection of the just. The great 
heart, with all its noble aspirations, its infinite longings 
and boundless love, was stilled forever. 

THE COMMON MAN.* 

The power of a great idea can not be estimated. It 
subordinates the mightiest physical forces to its own 
uses. Pile in its way obstacles mountains high, and at a 
single leap it shall surmount them all. It is divine; 
creating out of chaos for itself a world of order and 
beauty. Neither can we calculate the value of that 
small class of men who stand above their fellows, and, 
by the capacities of their minds, in every age direct and 
control the destinies of nations, and build the very foun- 

* First read before the Y. M. C. A. of Cincinnati, 1872. After- 
wards before the Y. M. C A. of Dayton. 



SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 157 

dations of society itself. Says America's greatest 
thinker: *'It is natural to believe in great men. We 
call our children and our lands by their names. Their 
names are wrought into the verbs of language; their 
works and effigies are in our houses, and every circum- 
stance of the day recalls an anecdote of them." In 
some sense, hero-worship elevates all who give them- 
selves up to it with a hearty enthusiasm. A boy who 
shall be brought up on a diet of Plutarch's Lives, and 
shall follow with sympathy the career of his mighty 
heroes— men and demi-gods — will, if he do not himself 
arise to greatness, come close enough to his great exem- 
plars to have the pathway of all his subsequent life 
irradiated by the serene brightness of their noble char- 
acters. And rapid and sure is the decline of that people 
who shall teach its youth to look upon men of high 
thought and endeavor with contempt or indifference. 

History troubles not herself about the masses of 
men. She seizes upon some individual great in thought 
or action and makes him the type of his age. She 
delights to show how her hero by the transcendent 
power of genius is enabled to shape in some degree the 
intellectual growth of all future ages. She paints in her 
most resplendent colors the career of poets who have 
created for themselves and for all men worlds of ineffable 
beauty and glory. She traces on her brilliant page the 
career of statesmen who — by the force of a will unyield- 
ing as granite, a boundless ambition, a persistent and 
untiring energy, and with an intuitive knowledge of 
human nature which enables them to spy out the most 
secret springs of human activities — hold in their thrall 
millions of men, and set up and pull down according to 
their own pleasure or caprice. She paints, too, in lurid 



158 JOHN HANCOCK. 

and enduring colors the career of the military heroes who 
rock the globe with the tramp of mighty armies, and 
stain the fair face of nature all over with the crimson 
hues of their terrible victories — hues which all the tears 
of widows and orphans can never wash away. Nor has 
she neglected the men mighty in speech who instruct and 
charm by their eloquence. And nowhere else does she 
present so grand a picture of the might of man as in the 
great orator whose lips are touched with a coal from off 
the altar of lofty purposes. Men hang upon his utter- 
ances entranced. Their hearts melt with tenderest pity 
or kindle with indignation at his words. The hoary 
walls of prejudice that defend still more ancient wrongs 
crumble into fme dust at his breath. In him the dumb 
slave fmds a voice. By him are they whose hearts are 
ready to faint lifted up; the righteous who have suffered 
from slander's keen tooth vindicated; the coward made a 
very lion in courage, and the wise and good comforted by 
the vision of the future triumph of the right. Neither 
are those who work in more quiet fields quite forgotten. 
He that measures the heavens with a rule, pierces the 
remotest boundaries of space, and weighs the universe 
in a balance ; and the workers in other sciences and the 
arts, who build high the everlasting memorials of their 
greatness in discoveries and inventions which civilize the 
race and prolong life, gratify the tastes, and relieve men 
from the drudgery of servile labor, — one and all receive 
a certain meed of praise. 

But it is not of these giants of the race that I desire 
to speak to-night. The earth is full of the glory of their 
achievements, and we may pass them by for the time 
without injustice, assured that they will never want a 
chronicler. Nor shall I stop to speak of the merchant 



SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 159 

prince whose commerce whitens every sea, and who car- 
ries to far off isles, the remotest hamlets, and most lone- 
some valleys, civilization and the comforts and refine- 
ments of life. Much less shall I stop to bother with that 
numerous class of people who are neither good nor great, 
who have forced themselves into prominence by the 
devious ways of the politician and his kind; nor with 
those who, having grown suddenly rich by illegitimate 
ways, wall themselves about with money bags, call 
themselves the "aristocracy," and are conspicuous in 
the inane doings of fashionable life, — who strut and 
swell and glitter, and look down on the masses of men, 
speak contemptuously of them, and generally by their 
foolish antics make themselves food for the inextinguish- 
able laughter of all sensible people. Such we may dis- 
miss from our consideration with a contemptuous wave of 
the hand and the benevolent and philosophic address of 
my uncle Toby to the fly he found in his soup : "Go, 
poor devil! the world is wide enough for thee and me." 
We are to consider, then, for the remainder of the 
hour, the Common Man, — him who neither thinks great 
thoughts, performs mighty deeds, nor has high aspira- 
tions, — but who, notwithstanding these comprehensive 
negations, contains within himself possibilities of labor, 
of thought, of moral elevation, and of happiness. We 
are to speak to-night of the man who shall never appear 
before the world in the guise of a philosopher ; shall 
never write a poem or a novel, an essay or a history, 
nor, mayhap, even attempt a newspaper article ; — of the 
man who in bygone times was always, a drudge, and 
often a slave, with no rights his more intellectual and 
powerful master was bound to respect, and who was 
looked down upon by this master as of little more worth 



l6o JOHN HANCOCK. 

than the ox by whose side he toiled; of the man who, in 
modern times, has been the butt of the cynical sneers of 
the Carlylian race of critics and philosophers ; of the man 
who has, in the general, patiently and good naturedly 
borne all their taunts and sneers, and has gone on 
sturdily doing the duty that lies nearest his hand, and 
whose plodding industry executes the marvelous works 
planned by the fertile brains of others. And with all 
his slowness, his mental and moral powers but partially 
developed, is not this plodder, forever chained to the 
rough oar of labor, worthy our sympathy, — nay, not our 
sympathy only, but of our profoundest respect? 
Though not great, he is indispensable to the world's 
progress, and often his character reaches a moral and 
religious heroism not often attained by his more fortu- 
nate fellows. Not seldom in history has this heroism 
reached the sublime heights of martyrdom ; tender 
youth, vigorous manhood, and trembling age alike facing 
death in its awfulest forms without blanching, their 
souls ascending from the dens of savage beasts or flame 
of fagots upon hymns of lofty triumph, leaving behind 
such precious testimony to the innate grandeur of 
humanity as makes us proud — even when our hearts 
are sickened by corruption and wrongs on every side — 
that we belong to the race. 

There is a quiet pluck and honesty of work about the 
Common Man that oftimes enables him to pass genius on 
the road. Whilst talent is uncertain and restless, he is 
stable and solid; the very rock on which society is built. 
No restless ambitions entice him abroad into the great 
world to attempt the slippery heights of renown. He is 
true to his country, faithful to his friend, and constant to 
his family. From his tough and vigorous stock, too. 



SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. l6l 

spring the men of splendid endowments of body and 
mind, who work themselves upward, step by step, 
expanding in the broader and freer atmosphere as they 
climb, and end by becoming makers of history. 

Yet notwithstanding his sterling qualities, notwith- 
standing the respect that is due him on account of the 
humanity that is in him, there is a reverse side to the 
picture — a side not only sad, but gloomy. Only too often 
he is ignorant ; and he possesses no sure talisman to 
enable him to escape the vice and crimes which follow in 
the wake of ignorance. Too frequently, also, the life he 
leads is an animal life, — sometimes a very besotted 
animal life, passion governing instead of reason ; his 
earnings instead of being spent for food, education, and 
the things that make home comfortable and pleasing, are 
squandered on drink and more debasing indulgences. 
Often he lies at the very foot of the ladder of ascending 
humanity without the ambition to place his foot on the 
first round, even. How to sweep away the cloud of ignor- 
ance that darkens his path with all its involved vices 
and crimes; how to breathe into a dead nature the breath 
that shall liberate its better forces and make it a living 
soul — ^this may well be termed the problem of humanity. 
A spirit of unrest, of questioning, is the beginning of 
life and growth. The soul itself must be touched by the 
Ithuriel spear of a divine power before it shall stand 
forth in its majesty, ready to do and dare great things. 
No lasting reforms can be impressed on men from with- 
out. Such may take hold for a little space, but soon 
their grasp relaxes, and their effects disappear. Tem- 
perance reforms, for instance, — worthy of all praise as 
they are, — may accomplish something towards reclaiming 
here and there an individual drunkard, and something 



i62 JOHN HANCOCK. 

more towards preventing men from becoming drunkards, 
but their influence must, from the very nature of things, 
be uncertain and spasmodic in communities cut off by- 
ignorance from intellectual enjoyments. The members 
of such communities are tormented by a craving for 
something that shall divert the thoughts from the daily 
routine of plodding drudgery, — a craving which is natural 
and universal ; — and lacking pleasures which are pure, 
they will satisfy this craving by those which are bestial. 
Hence, any permanent reform must be a growth from 
within which shall gradually unfold in the fertile soil of 
man's better nature. 

The history of the race shows that the elevation of a 
people in wisdom and virtue has always been slow ; so 
slow sometimes as scarcely to be perceptible in a genera- 
tion. And yet — not unlike the upheaval of some mighty 
continent from the force of internal fires, which is hardly 
lifted more than a single foot in a century, but which in 
the long course of geologic ages is raised from ocean 
depths into the marvelous effulgence of God's sunlight, 
to be clothed with beauty and become the happy homes 
of millions of rejoicing creatures — ^this moral movement 
of the race goes on, raising men into a purer spiritual 
atmosphere and a brighter intellectual life. But this 
movement, so slow in the past, we may be permitted to 
hope will be greatly accelerated in the future. The 
signs of it are numerous and evident. The telegraph 
that flashes a thought around the globe in an instant, and 
the mighty steam-press thrusting knowledge into every 
nook and corner of the world, give assurances of it. 
Indeed, all the combined forces that act upon and through 
society, and which we term the spirit of the age, seem to 
work to the same end. 



SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 163 

Our age is one of unrest and a tremendous mental 
activity which pierces the very heavens and inquires 
into the nature of all things. In social investigations 
this activity is not, as heretofore, confined to the doings, 
the wants, and the destiny of what are termed the 
higher classes. The Common Man, his doings, wants 
and destiny, are also brought into wonderful prominence. 
The question, the so-called higher classes begin to see, is 
no longer, **What shall we do with him," but '* What will 
he do with us ?" And to them.this question comes not 
unaccompanied with a vague sort of terror. Here is a 
giant who has slept, with rare intervals of waking, ever 
since the history of man began, and now he threatens to 
rouse himself in awful earnest, and it looks as though no 
anesthetic could be found powerful enough to put him to 
sleep again. To pat him on the back, and call him a 
good fellow, will scarcely answer the purpose. What, 
then, is to be done with him ? Shall we strive with him 
for the mastery ? The strife will be between intellectual 
strength, and a blind force — terrible in its pitiless inertia. 
And though the former must in the end come off trium- 
phant, may it not, for a time at least, be worsted in the 
conflict ? May not this giant of the masses become 
conscious of his powers, — with his passions fired by the 
memories of wrongs heaped upon him through untold 
centuries and his greed stimulated by the prospect of the 
wealth that lies within easy reach of his grasp, — turn 
upon society itself and hurl it into dreadful chaos ? 
Instead of attempting to hold him in the ancient thrall, 
will it not be far better to invite him into a common 
brotherhood, and endeavor to render him entirely 
worthy of it ? 

One of the problems that most pressingly demands a 



i64 JOHN HANCOCK. 

solution is what is called the labor question, — and a 
knotty sort of sum it is, too. And it is not strange that 
being the most interested party, the laborer himself 
should be anxious to try his hand at its solution — and a 
pretty fist he has made of it thus far ! He sees, or 
thinks he sees, that others reap the fruits of his toil ; is 
naturally dissatisfied with his present condition and 
future prospects, and concludes there must be something 
radically wrong in the constitution of society itself. 
But his proposed remedies for this wrong, as might have 
been expected, are of the wildest and most chimerical 
sort ; for he who attacks this problem without having a 
thorough knowledge of political economy does a fool- 
hardy thing. (Perhaps I ought to except from an asser- 
tion so sweeping that race of statesmen of which our 
country is so prolific. To them all the wisdom of the 
ancients is as foolishness, and, without study or thought, 
they see intuitively, as it were, the right thing to do and 
the best method of its accomplishment.) To meet in 
labor conventions, to be deluged by ''the loose expecto- 
rations" of frothy speech from addle-brained dema- 
gogues, whose howl, to their own ears, is most sweet 
music, and then, to cap the climax of absurdity, by 
resolving that rents are a deadly sin and that property is 
robbery, contributes about as much to the solution of 
this problem as would a powerful and eloquent denun- 
ciation of the inclination of the earth's axis, or the pas- 
sage of a resolution denying, with great unanimity and 
emphasis, the force of gravity. 

For the crazy enthusiast who believes what he 
preaches, and who, however mistaken he may be as to 
the means he adopts to carry out his purpose, has a 
sincere desire to benefit his fellow-man, we have charity 



SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 165 

and that respect which is always to be rendered to 
honesty and earnestness ; but for the bellowing dema- 
gogue, whose ignorance is only equaled by his impu- 
dence, who strives to sow dissensions and hatred among 
the different classes of society to forward his own selfish 
designs, we entertain no feeling but a profound contempt. 

Another result of the intellectual activity of our 
times is a new investigation of the grounds of beliefs 
long since considered settled. New theories spring up 
on every hand, and attack without hesitation our most 
sacred institutions ; — even the Christian religion itself is 
summoned again to make its defence. Having displaced, 
as they think, the Creator of all things, it would be an 
amusing sight, were it not that they have a large follow- 
ing of well-meaning but not over well -informed dupes, to 
behold the self-worshiping knot of materialistic philoso- 
phers, each striving with frantic eagerness to seize the 
crank of the universe and show astonished intelligences 
what sweet music he can make among the revolving 
spheres. We may deplore this prevalent inconoclastic 
spirit, and wish it were otherwise ; but we shall gain 
nothing by attempting, after a cowardly fashion, to blink 
the unwelcome fact out of sight. On the contrary, we 
should gird ourselves like brave men to meet it. 

The time has passed, never to return, when we shall 
be able to control men's opinions by statute. Truth 
henceforward will be compelled to rely exclusively on 
her legitimate weapons — reason and evidence — for her 
triumphs. But let us not be concerned that this is so. 
No fears need be entertained that she will suffer from the 
change. She asks nothing more in her contests than a 
fair field. And it is well for all of us that there is left us 
but one way of beating an opponent, and that is by 



i66 JOHN HANCOCK 

argument. Neither can the thinking of any community 
hereafter be done by a class of men who claim the right 
on account of their supposed superiority of wisdom and 
intelligence. We shall in due time recognize the fact 
that one man can no more do another's thinking than he 
can do his eating. Doubtless men of talent and genius 
will always have their just and appropriate influence in 
the conduct of affairs ; but the distance between thinkers, 
as a class, and workers will gradually diminish as the lat- 
ter accustom themselves more and more to mingle mental 
activity with their toil. For we may declaim as much 
and eloquently as we please of the dignity of labor, but 
it shall be the veriest demagogism unless thinking 'is to 
accompany that labor. Hard, drudging labor, undirected 
by any ray of intelligence, has nothing ennobling in it, 
and the sooner workingmen recognize this truth the bet- 
ter it will be for their future. Fortunately, all labor, 
even the humblest and the rudest, is the better done for 
having a working brain as well as a working hand 
engaged in it. 

Goethe has said, *' Man's task is not to solve the prob- 
lem of the universe, but to fmd out what he can do.'* 
And this is the great question to be settled by our work- 
ingman. Not what he can do in material things (for 
that has already been pretty thoroughly demonstrated), 
but what he can do in the things that are intellectual 
and which pertain to his true manhood — a thing that in 
the humblest transcends the glory of kings and the 
grandest achievements of science and philosophy. The 
first and great thing for him to do, as must appear to 
every one, is to learn how to make the most of himself ; 
how to direct his powers to the best advantage ; learn 
not to underestimate himself, nor yet to be puffed up 



SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 167 

with a vain conceit, which is the parent of unprofitable, 
longings and hopes never to be realized ; learn that that 
life is most pleasing in the sight of heaven and good 
men which, in whatever station it may be placed, is 
bravely spent in the discharge of duty. Let him not 
be anxious, either, to climb into places for which neither 
education nor talent has fitted him, serenely conscious 
that to be a man is far better than to be a seeker for 
place, however high its honors or fat its perquisites. Not 
envious, either, when Mrs. Shoddy rolls by in her car- 
riage, whilst he trudges the dusty highway on foot ; — in 
short, not estimating too highly the outer adornments of 
life, but the rather giving heed to the things that pertain 
to its internal beauty; a beauty which, either in peasant 
or kaiser, is a joy forever. 

I would not be misunderstood. There is not too much 
ambition in the world. Far from it. But this ambition 
needs a noble direction. In this country, especially, in 
which the way of usefulness lies open and broad before 
all men, our whole people ought to be filled with an 
eager desire to achieve a manliness commensurate with 
their privileges ; to desire it with such intensity as that 
the thought shall keep them constant company in their 
daily avocations, — ^that they shall wrestle for it and 
make sacrifices for it so long as life shall last. The 
power of a great idea, the product of an intense and 
powerful mind, has already been alluded to. And has not 
a good thought its power also, when made a constant 
companion, even though the companion of the com- 
monest mind ? For shall it not gradually transform a 
nature rude and coarse into one refined and pure ? But 
in order that it may exert this transforming influence, 
too much stress can not be laid upon the fact that this 



l68 JOHN HANCOCK. 

good thought is not to be an occasional but a constant 
guest of the mind, going with men into the midst of the 
hurry and turmoil of that strife which wrings subsis- 
tence from perverse nature and more perverse circum- 
stances, — going with them as they follow the plow, 
shove the plane, swing the axe, or wield the mattock 
and the spade. And they who teach, and those who 
preach, and we who lecture, shall have taught, and 
preached, and lectured in vain — aye, all our teaching and 
preaching and lecturing will have proved the merest 
idiotic babbling if they shall have created within the 
soul of no listener one aspiration at least to lead a truer 
life. 

There is but one way for a man to make the most of 
himself, and that way is to educate himself. No one can 
know what powers may lie hid within him until he has 
applied the touchstone of training. Without education, 
he is scarcely more powerful than the monkey from 
whom some philosophers declare him to be descended in 
a direct line. Of course we use the word " education " 
not in its restricted sense of school-book training, but in 
that larger sense which includes all training which gives 
additional skill or power of thought. The learning of 
the schools should not be overvalued, for that leads to 
narrow pedantry; nor must it be undervalued — as it 
often is by laboring men — for that leads to nothing ; 
unless it be to petrify all the institutions of society into 
solid, ugly forms, and keep men in the condition of the 
savage. It has not been many years — not half a hun- 
dred, at any rate — since the general run of our farmers 
were accustomed to sneer at those they called ** book- 
farmers " — ^that is, those who attempted to apply the 
principles of science to their work. And these sneerers 



SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 169 

turned up the derisive noses they had followed so long 
and with such confidence at the new-fangled steel plows 
and reaping machines, and stuck to their wooden mould- 
boards and reaping-hooks with a pertinacity worthy 
Sidney Smith's conservative, who refused to look at the 
new moon on account of the regard he entertained for 
that venerable institution, the old one. But they awoke 
from their stupidity only to find that the soil of their 
farms, disgusted with the unscientific treatment it had 
received, had slipped away, leaving in its stead nothing 
but stubborn clay, glittering sand, or bare rocks. So the 
** visionary book-farmers " came out of the contest with 
flying colors ; as intelligence always will when pitted 
against ignorance and unreasoning prejudice. Now 
unless it be in some secluded region where the whistle 
of the locomotive is never heard, and the daily paper is 
unknown, no one is foolish enough to deny his obliga- 
tions to the science which enables him to read the soil 
beneath his feet as an open book. His prejudices, his 
wooden mould-boards, and his reaping-hooks are thrown 
aside together as useless lumber. 

To say, as is often said, that the laboring man is no 
better for education is insufferable nonsense. He can 
run a straighter furrow and hew a straighter line from 
having had his eye and muscles trained in drawing. He 
can chop a log in two, or dig a post-hole the quicker 
when a thinking brain has enabled the laboring hand to 
take advantage of nature and, as Emerson has it, com- 
pels gravitation to work as its helper. The advantage 
education affords in the performance of common labor is 
not a matter of mere conjecture, but is a fact established 
by actual experiment in large factories and work-shops, 
where many hundreds and thousands of hands are 



170 JOHN HANCOCK. 

employed. And it is not the testimony of employers 
alone but of employes, as well ; gathered, not from a 
single locality, but from every quarter of the earth. 
The result is the more striking from the low standard 
taken for the measurement ; that standard being only the 
ability to read and write. The superiority of educated 
labor, it will be readily ' concluded, would have been 
still more strikingly manifested if the standard of a 
higher culture had been applied. 

The day is not far distant, we may trust, when gov- 
ernments will come to perceive that that nation will be 
strongest in which ' knowledge is most thoroughly 
diffused. Perhaps even our rulers may come, in that 
good time, to place less reliance on the intuitions of the 
untaught American minds, and to recognize the fact that 
a knowledge of spelling, grammar, arithmetic, and even 
higher branches, does not necessarily make a man 
unpractical, and disqualify him for office of statesman- 
ship. 

That men should strive to know more because it 
makes them more skillful as soldiers, as day laborers, as 
mechanics, as farmers, and in all the vocations of life — 
and this is an object of no mean consideration — would be 
planting the standard we follow on too low a level. 
There is no hereditary rank among souls. The soul of 
the peasant has as high an intrinsic value as that of the 
lord. But a soul may slumber as a spark in a heap of 
the ashes of lust and all brutal passions, or burn with a 
pure and radiant flame fanned .by all the kindly winds of 
heaven. The divine origin of the soul and Plato's doc- 
trine of its preexistence is thus beautifully set forth by 
Wordsworth: 



SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 171 

'* Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting : 
The soul that rises with us, our life's star, 
Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
And Cometh from afar : 
Not in entire forgetfulness, 
And not in utter nakedness, 
But trailing clouds of glory do we come. 
From God who is our home." 

It is the recognition of this grandeur of manhood — 
not in what it does, but in what it is — that lies at the 
bottom of all true democracy. And it is the recognition 
of the religious element in man that makes a government 
by the people possible. Eliminate from men's minds the 
belief in a Supreme Being and the immortality of the 
soul, and instead of order and government, we shall 
have all swallowed up in a' rayless anarchy; a very hill 
of gloomy despair, more chaotic and terrible than any- 
thing portrayed by the imagination of a Milton or Dante. 

No feeling mind can contemplate the history of the 
Common Man unmoved. Through all its annals, his has 
been a sad fate. Upon him have rested a world's bur- 
den and suffering. The car of events has rolled 
forwards, sometimes slowly, sometimes rapidly, but 
always over his crushed body and bruised spirit. While 
to the few above there has shone a light of gladness, 
increasing from a dim dawn to a golden flood, the masses 
below have groped in darkness and apathy or despair. 
To be born to drudge, to die, has been their monotonous 
story. But I feel — feel most profoundly — that for these 
masses a better day has already arisen : that the light 
of a Christian civilization is penetrating, with cheering 
radiance, more and more into the valley of their humili- 
ation. 



172 JOHN HANCOCK. 

And how must our best emotions be stirred as we 
behold these human souls, so long bowed down in des- 
pair, shaking off the apathy that has so long held them 
in the bonds of ignorance, arise, and, with trembling and 
uncertain footsteps at first, but ' gradually growing firmer 
and truer, join in the grand march of humanity in the 
path of progress, — making their daily labor vocal with 
happy praise ! And what an arena for work is this 
broad field of humanity ! With what a noble zeal ought 
all of us to enter into its labors, — ^for we live not unto 
ourselves ! How petty are all personal ambitions com- 
pared with the ambition which has for its object the 
improvement of a race ! To be the executive head of a 
great nation is, indeed, a noble position, but one not 
inconsistent with the lowest and most selfish aims ; but 
to be the head of a great movement for the amelioration 
of the condition of mankind — or to be even the humblest 
worker in such a movement — is far nobler, and utterly 
inconsistent with meanness of intellect or heart. But he 
who works in this broad field of humanity must not be 
impatient for results, for in the moral and intellectual, as 
in the physical world, a normal growth is slow and will 
not bear too much forcing. The seed that he sows with 
infinite toil may show no signs of fruit in his day, — and 
yet he shall not be without his reward in the conscious- 
ness of duty performed. He need expect but little grat- 
itude, either, for what he does; for gratitude is the pro- 
duct of magnanimous souls only, which souls are them- 
selves again chiefly the product of liberal culture. The 
bravest man in all the earth is he who dares to stand 
alone in the right, and the most god-like is he who works 
for other's without expectation of reward. 

We hear much of eight hour laws, and combinations 



SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 173 

among craftsmen to prevent their trades being over- 
crowded, but they mistake the nature of their difficulties. 
All such expedients are unphilosophical, and in the very 
nature of things, transitory and of evil effect. There 
can be little doubt that the number of hours for a day's 
labor will, from causes now at work, — such as improve- 
ments in and a wider application of machinery, — soon be 
very considerably reduced ; but whether this reduction 
shall inure to the benefit of the workingman will depend 
upon himself alone — upon the use he makes of the time 
thus gained. If he shall devote it to rendering him- 
self more skillful in his craft, to making himself wiser 
and in building up for himself a nobler manhood, then 
his profit will be great indeed ; but if it shall be spent in 
carousings in drinking saloons or places of worse resort, 
then will this leisure have proved a curse instead of a 
blessing, for no drudgery, however severe, can crush a 
man into the very earth like vicious idleness. We may 
well rejoice when the time for greater leisure shall come 
in, provided men have learned first how best to use that 
leisure. 

The masses may multiply expedients like those just 
named to better their condition, but they will prove as 
futile as the idle wind. There is no escape for them into 
a better position (I do not mean by a better position an 
escape from labor) except through the doorway of knowl- 
edge ; and we may thank Providence that, in this country 
at least, the same temple of learning gives free access to 
rich and poor alike ; that here the son of the washer- 
woman may bear away the prize from the youth who is 
clothed in purple and fine linen and fares sumptuously 
every day. 

To know more, then, should be an ever-present 



174 JOHN HANCOCK. 

determination of the laborer, — to read more books, to 
see more pictures, to hear more music ; in short, to avail 
himself of every possible means of culture. 

Society is only strong in proportion to the amount of 
moral solidity and vital thought-power it contains, and 
this amount will depend upon the facilities society affords 
for the education of its whole people, and their dispos- 
ition to avail themselves of these facilities. We boast of 
our free schools, but let us see for a moment whether we 
are making the most of them. It is true the instruction 
given in them takes a wider sweep than formerly. We 
now not only attempt to form the intellect in them, but 
to form character also. But, let me ask, what complete- 
ness of intellectual training we are likely to be able to 
give a child, or what maturity of character, before it has 
arrived at the age of thirteen years ? And yet if we 
examine the statistics of school attendance in our cities 
and towns we shall find less than one-fifth of the pupils 
above the age mentioned. If to the thousands of pupils 
withdrawn from school before they have attained suffic- 
ient maturity of mind to think correctly upon the sim- 
plest subjects, we add those other thousands who go to 
school not at all, and from whose ranks our criminal 
classes are constantly recruited, we shall find an amount 
of ignorance in our communities truly alarming. And 
when we reflect that it is such men as these are sure to 
become who are expected to govern themselves; to 
decide by their votes questions that may well test the 
highest intelligence and calmest judgment, — questions 
upon which the welfare, nay, the very existence of the 
republic may depend, — we may well stand appalled at the 
issues presented us. For myself I can see but one 
remedy for all this, and that remedy is compulsory 



SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 175 

education. We must open schools everywhere; must 
plant them in the most desolate regions of vice in our 
great cities and towns, — and then reach out the strong 
arm of the law to compel parents to give their children 
an opportunity to learn. If they prefer a private to a 
public school, they should be allowed to enjoy this pref- 
erence, of course ; but let it be understood that hence- 
forth and forever, in this goodly country of ours, there 
shall be no uneducated class. Parents have no such 
exclusive and overshadowing property in their offspring 
as to entitle them to dwarf their minds, or bodies, either, 
through ignorance or caprice. 

I am aware that in the beginning we shall have to 
make haste slowly in this great undertaking. It may 
not be prudent in a first legislation to do more than 
declare that all children under a given age — say thir- 
teen — shall be compelled to attend school, and that all 
above that age — and under, say, eighteen — not engaged 
in some regular employment, shall be under the same 
compulsion. Of course we shall not rest satisfied until 
in the end we have established a higher standard of 
education for the masses of our people than has ever 
been set up by any other nationality. It may be 
objected that no republican government has a right to 
exercise such a power over its citizens as is involved in a 
scheme like this ; but if a republican government, which 
is but the organized will of its people, has no right to 
interpose where so much good is to be secured and where 
so much evil is to be avoided, and to go further, where 
the very existence of the State itself is involved, what 
is a republican government good for ? 

But nothwithstanding the importance of schools, it is 
not in them alone that all education is obtained ; though 



176 JOHN HANCOCK. 

they are at the foundation of the most of it. The earth 
and all the things therein and the glories and wonders of 
the heavens are God's university. In them are found 
problems whose solution may well test all the powers of 
the grandest intellects. But not alone to such intellects 
do they appeal. The earth is filled with scenes^ of such 
quiet, as well as resplendent, beauty as, having been 
once perceived by the trained eye, shall leave an 
ineffaceable picture in the mind, ever exercising upon it 
a heathful influence. 

Hawthorne — in his story of the Great Stone Face, 
with a wealth and beauty of expression rivaled by no 
other American author, and with a keen perception of 
the unfolding of the powers of the human soul — has 
depicted, in a story touching and noble, the profound and 
lasting influence of Nature in her grander moods in 
moulding character. Most of those who hear me will 
remember the story. It is of a farmer boy, born in a 
secluded New England valley, poor and untutored, but 
living in view of a remarkable production of nature. 
This was the resemblance to a human face of gigantic 
proportions, serene, majestic and noble in appearance, 
formed by rocks piled up in fantastic fashion high on the 
mountain side, and overlooking the whole valley. By 
the constant contemplation of this face, whose expression 
was at once grand and sweet, the mind and character of 
the lad began to unfold themselves into the similitude of 
the image he so revered. He grew in soul as he grew in 
years, and gre^t men came from abroad to listen to the 
simple husbandman, who had ideas, unlike those of other 
men, not gained from books, but of a higher tone, — a 
tranquil and familiar majesty, as if he had been talking 
with the angels as his familiar friends. When he had 



SELECTIONS ^ROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 177 

grown old, he preached to his simple neighbors in words 
that were of life, because a life of good deeds and holy- 
love was melted into them, and his countenance glowed 
with the thought within ; then it wa^ that his likness to 
that great stone face, whose look of grand beneficence 
seemed to embrace the world, was seen to be complete. 

3ut Nature reveals not her choicest beauties except to 
those who come to her with loving spirits and are willing 
to learn of her. Them she makes seers of wondrous 
visions, and bestows upon them senses to feel exquisite 
pleasures all unknown to hard and vulgar souls. To 
the ignorant she is a dumb oracle, giving back no 
response to their vain questionings. 

It is one of the glories of modern methods of school 
instruction that they bring into our school-rooms Nature 
and her ways of teaching, and thus unite her methods 
with those of the more artificial ones of books. And I 
believe these true and healthy methods of education are 
to accelerate greatly the intellectual and moral growth 
of our people by presenting knowledge to the young in 
more attractive forms than has been done heretofore, 
thus leading them up through the tangible lessons of the 
material world into the world of books and abstract 
thinking, joining as it were, in a beautiful union, the 
thought of God and the thought of man. 

Our people must be drawn to read more, also. He 
makes a great mistake who supposes the knowledge 
gained from text-books, however extended it may be, 
constitutes an education. One may have made all their 
contents his own, and yet be comparitively ignorant. 
Contact with the noble thoughts found in literature is 
that which makes a man's mind grow; and in no other 
way can the highest culture be obtained. As Sir John 



178 JOHN HANCOCK. 

Herschel has it, books are the great civilizers, not per- 
mitting men to remain savages. Libraries are only a 
little less important as a means of education than the 
common school itself, and one ought to be found in 
every school district. It has been said that one who 
has learned another language besides his own, has made 
himself twice the man he was before ; in like manner, 
that city or town which has erected within her borders a 
great free library has doubled her power. Its influence 
will permeate every avenue of her industries. It will 
give her merchants more comprehensive notions of the 
operation of the laws of trade. Through it, her lawyers 
will learn more thoroughly the principles of that science 
which has been termed the perfection of human reason; 
and her divines be enabled to present the truths of .the 
gospel they preach with a profounder knowledge of its 
mysteries. It will stimulate the inventive powers of her 
artisans, and give her laborers the power to strike 
harder and truer blows ; and in all classes, civilization 
and morality will have a more certain and enduring foot- 
hold. From a city or town blessed with free schools and 
free books will go forth into every region young men 
strong, acute, wasting no power, prodigal of nothing but 
industry, who shall tunnel the mountains, bridge the 
rivers, and build the railroads and houses of less 
thoughtful peoples. 

And what a solemn yet delightful place is a great 
library ! In it we have piled up, not the dried mummies 
of ancient men, as in the catacombs of Egypt, but in the 
volumes, ranged around, we have embalmed their minds; 
their souls. No death has come, or can ever come, to 
them ; they live in perennial youth. As deep under the 
hills are stored away, in the shape of coal lumps, the 



SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 179 

light and heat the sun distributed to our world in primeval 
ages, to wait man's liberating hand that he may be 
blessed with their grateful light and warmth, so, in the 
books on library shelves, are stored, from all times, those 
great thoughts that shall quicken and enlighten the 
minds of students, and prove a rich possession to the 
poorest. 

The people need, too, free picture galleries and cheap 
music. That city which gives her artists no support, or 
but a mean and niggardly one, and thus drives them 
beyond her borders into regions possessing more liber- 
ality and taste, does a suicidal thing, and will soon find 
herself sinking into the pitiable and deserved condition 
of apathetic indifference to all enterprises of pith and 
moment. Art is the fme, spiritual essence of a town — 
its soul ; and without this soul it can only make a pre- 
tense of being alive. Its people can no more become 
great in what constitutes a high civilization without a 
generous support of art than they can live without blood 
and brains. To the poor man, a fme picture or a noble 
strain of music will prove a subtle force to draw him, for 
a time, from the hardness of his every-day life into the 
loftier regions of the ideal, — ^to transport him from turb- 
ulent realms into those serene and heavenly ones whose 
light is such as never ** shone on sea or on land." 

But I must bring this plea for the masses of men — a 
plea so far beneath the greatness of the theme — to a 
close. It will be seen, if I have succeeded in making 
myself understood, that the burden of this plea is for a 
higher manhood ; that while the improvement of man's 
physical condition — which, through the almost infinite 
forms and activities of scientific research, is going for- 
ward with such wondrous strides — is not to be under- 



i8o JOHN HANCOCK. 

valued, his moral and intellectual improvement is to be 
our great aim ; that we are not to be limited in our 
hopes of the future by our experience of the past,— for 
we may not unreasonably expect that a century of the 
future, in its development of all true growth and wisdom, 
will exceed a cycle of the past, and will open up such a 
prospect for the Common Man as has not been dreamed 
of until within the last few prolific years. 

Another purpose has been to speak such words of 
cheer, to those engaged in a struggle with adverse cir- 
cumstances, as lay within the compass of my powers. 

I would have laboring men respect their own man- 
hood, and not be content to live an unthinking, animal 
life only ; to be proud that it is from their vigorous ranks 
that the great men of earth are constantly recruited ; 
and to remember that education is the only way to the 
amelioration of the condition of the race. 

I would have all men study the beauty and grandeur 
of Nature, in order that they may form a nobler concep- 
tion of the author of it all. I would have them study 
art, so that their tases may be refmed and elevated ; to 
study books, so that they may make great and good 
thoughts their constant companions. 

'*It is noticed," says Emerson, ''that the considera- 
tion of the great periods and spaces of astronomy 
induces a dignity of mind and an indifference to death." 
Every man should, therefore, endeavor to fashion him- 
self somewhat after the greatness of Nature, — a sort of 
titanic manhood, that rejoices in battling with adverse 
circumstances, and remembers that no high endeavor 
goes without its reward. I would have men who neither 
write great epics nor perform them capable of appreciat- 
ing their heroism. I would have the masses of people 



SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. l8i 

grow up in such sturdy honesty as will enable them, in a 
venal age, to laugh at bribes ; and of such virtue as to 
carry them through a profligate one with an unsoiled 
reputation ; to live lives so simply and quietly grand, in 
their frankness and integrity, that they may shame us 
all into more righteous ways. To become such men, 
neither great learning, great wealth, nor high rank is 
required. Such a manhood is perfectly consistent with 
poverty and a humble position ; though without a cer- 
tain greatness of soul, it is impossible; for in the 
language of another: **The highest qualifications 
are not those which money can procure, nor those 
which the want of it can hinder ; the highest gratifi- 
cations are those of which the means are given free; 
and the means, so far as the dispensations of nature are 
concerned, are distributed with a most bountiful 
equality. 

We need but health and a modest subsistence; 
then, with simple tastes, the world is to us a resplen- 
dent dwelling, a richly furnished home. We have 
then a vast property in the works of God ; we are lords 
of a magnificent possession ; and to the utmost capacity 
of our faculties, the past, the present, the mighty 
universe, is our inheritance. The stars give all their joy 
without price to those who look up to them with a wake- 
ful spirit ; and when their beams meet, in the clear eye, 
a radiance from the soul within, to that soul the whole 
arch of heaven becomes a blaze of living glory. Can 
gold or gems present so rich a splendor ? Can art pre- 
pare so fair a show as those solemn heavens which God 
himself stretcheth out as a curtain; which he spreadeth 
abroad as a tent to dwell in .?'' 



i82 JOHN HANCOCK. 

A TRIBUTE TO PATRIOTS. 

Address at Soldiers' Circle, Eastern Graveyard, Chillicothe, O., 
Memorial Day, 1887. 

COMRADES AND FELLOW CITIZENS :— We do well to 
worship the hero, whether of high or low degree, for it 
is he that stirs men to great thoughts as well as great 
deeds. Without him the earth would shrivel into a nar- 
row space. The reputations of the great officers of the 
rebellion, such as Grant, Thomas, McPherson, Sedg- 
wick, and a thousand others, are fixed. The sky-pierc- 
ing monuments of their fame are builded, and they will 
stand forever. There is no need of words of praise for 
them on such an occasion as this. Their memories 
crowd upon us unbidden, *' trailing clouds of glory as 
they come." This day is specially set apart to lay a 
loving tribute on the graves of the brave men who won 
the victories their officers planned; the Common Soldiers 
who carried the musket; men who have but short mon- 
uments, and many of whom — alas ! poor fellows — have 
none. 

But before we speak our few inadequate words of the 
Common Soldier, let us turn, for a few moments, to that 
grandest figure in modern history — perhaps in all history — 
around which, as a center, the patriotic and tender memo- 
ries of our war for national perpetuity gather themselves. 
On his shoulders was laid a tremendous burden. The 
Union, cemented by the blood of our fathers, was in awful 
peril. By him were to be marshalled and directed the 
resources of the nation for the defense of this Union. And 
how great and good our President proved himself to be 
under these trying circumstances. This man from the 
prairies, — uncouth in person, without school training, and 



SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 183 

with small opportunities for social culture, — in virtue of his 
great natural powers and his supreme manliness, proved 
his title to a place among masterly men. In puplic 
affairs, America has had many men of large talents ; 
but Lincoln is her one man of genius. 

Humor is that element in man which rounds off and 
gives grace to more substantial qualities. It lubricates 
the hinges of his mind, which otherwise, give out but 
a grating sound. It is essential to moral and intellectual 
as well as physical health. He that dwells in gloom is 
wont to lose sight of the good Lord and sympathy with 
his children ; but the genial light of humor dissipates the 
cloud, and warms the heart towards man and all that 
lives on this pleasant earth of ours. It is almost 
always, too, accompanied by the acutest susceptibilities 
of sympathy for the unfortunate. The genial humorist 
may laugh at their follies, but he pities their weaknesses 
and relieves their necessities. The good Abraham Lin- 
coln is a notable example of this combination of humor 
and deep feeling. In the multitude of amusing stories 
attributed to him — most of them falsely so, no doubt — 
we are apt to lose sight of the real man. While he yet 
lived, many that were not unfriendly to him, deplored 
what seemed to them* triviality in the midst of events 
momentous and terrible. But time has shown how 
incapable they were of fathoming his nature. The 
great deep of his spirit was an ocean of love for man, 
which would have been too dark and sad, had not its 
surface been illuminated by the gleams of his kindly 
humor. From those melancholy eyes of his, suffused 
with the light of an infinite pity, looked out the true 
soul of the author of the Emancipation Proclamation and 
the Gettysburg address. 



1^4 JOHN HANCOCK* 

Though Lincoln's thought at the beginning of the 
war, as was that of most people of the North, was fixed 
exclusively upon the restoration of the Union as it had 
been, it was not long before his practical and capacious 
mind became convinced that no reunion of the dis- 
severed members could be permanent, unless slavery, 
the one always disturbing element, should be uncondition- 
ally abolished. 

And the adoring affection of the emancipated slaves 
for their liberator conferred the highest honor on those 
who gave as well as on him who received. An instance 
of this affection, not entirely without pathos, came 
under my own notice. When the President, in the 
summer of '64, visited General Grant at City Point, the 
two rode together over to Petersburg, at that time, as is 
well known, the objective point of army operations. 
On one side of the country road leading from one point 
to the other, and some hundred yards or so from it, was 
the camp of that part of the Eighteenth Corps composed 
of colored troops. On the opposite side of the road was 
a corps, or part of a corps, of white troops. As it was 
not known on our side of the Appomattox that the Presi- 
dent was in the neighborhood, he and General Grant 
passed up towards Petersburg attracting little attention. 
But gradually it became bruited about that the two had 
been seen riding towards the front, and all were on the 
alert to get sight of them on their way back. Late in 
the afternoon, far up the road, they were seen coming — 
without an escort, according to my recollection. The 
moment it became generally known that the President 
was at hand, the colored troops unanimously broke 
camp, and rushed to the roadside. An army of bayonets 
could not have held them back. And such demonstra- 



SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 185 

tions of joy I never before beheld. They gave them- 
selves up to their feelings with all the ardor and aban- 
don of their race. With a commingling of wild, inde- 
scribable gestures, all shouted, **Hurrah for Massa 
Linkum ! God bless Massa Linkum! " tears of joy and 
love all the while running down their black cheeks. The 
white troops, looking on, thinking perhaps that General 
Grant might feel a little lonesome in this exuberant dis- 
play of feeling in which he seemed to have no part, 
tried to set up a counter shout for him, but it didn't make 
even a dent in the great ocean of sound flowing from the 
stentorian lungs of their colored brethren. 

But it was not only on his own side in this greatest of 
civil wars that the humane side of Mr. Lincoln's charac- 
ter was shown. He was magnanimous to those warring 
against him — ^too magnanimous many of us then thought. 
But whatever of bitterness there was in the bosom of 
others against the South — and such a feeling was not 
altogether unnatural then — ^there seemed to be little or 
none in his. This is now conceded South as well as 
North, and the fact is likely to be more fully corrobor- 
ated as time rolls on. 

Franklin has been called the incarnation of common 
sense; the typical American. He was pushing, econom- 
ical, thrifty. But he was something more and better. 
Whilst he was careful in material things, he did not 
neglect the things that belong to the higher life. His 
hunger for knowledge was all-devouring, and in his boy- 
hood he half starved his body to satisfy it. He was, in 
addition, public-spirited, always contriving something 
for the good of his fellow-men, whether it was a stove or 
a free library. A man great in science, and greater in 
patriotism and statesmanship, a man not altogether 



i86 JOHN HANCOCK. 

unfit to be a model for aspiring young men in our own 
day. But in Abraham Lincoln they have an exemplar 
of a nobler cast. While not so wise in wordly affairs as 
Franklin, his influence on American life will be more 
profound and pervasive, an influence to draw all men to 
the worship of the loftiest ideals, and one which will 
never through all ages have an end. 

It has been with no foolish belief that I could by any 
words of mine add a single honor to this grand and lov- 
able character — no words can do that, for his deeds are 
his monument — that I have written these few pages of 
warm personal admiration, but that, peradventure, the 
hearts of some of the young men gathered about me 
might be stirred by an intenser desire to serve nobly 
the country for which he lived and died. 

Some one has recently said that the only perfectly 
just war the world has ever seen was the war for the 
preservation of the American Union. 

And if we run our minds back over the bloody record 
of time, we shall see how nearly correct this judgment 
is. Possibly we should want to join with it our Revo- 
lutionary War as its fellow. And as this war for the 
preservation of the Union rose above other wars in its 
sublime justice, insomuch were the armies that fought 
its battles composed of men of a finer intellectual and 
moral fiber. The cause and its defenders fitted together 
with a beautiful symmetry. The armies of other coun- 
tries are largely filled with men of desperate fortunes or 
by an unrelenting conscription from the whole popula- 
tion able to bear arms. 

The men that followed our flag were largely volun- 
teers, and of the choicest of our manhood. Every class 
was represented. The farmer from his fields, the day 



SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK*S WRITINGS. 187 

laborers from the streets, the artisan from his workshop, 
the clerk from the store, the student from college and 
his professor with him, the lawyer and the judge, the 
preacher and the schoolmaster, all laid down their tools 
and their books to take up the sword and the musket. 

In this wonderful outpouring of citizens all social 
distinctions were obliterated in the devotion of a great 
purpose. The comforts of pleasant homes were soon 
forgotten, or remembered but dimly, and hard-tack, 
pork and beans, and the army blue stood in their places 
as the unromantic realities. The utmost freedom was 
exchanged for a stern discipline and the horrors of the 
battle-field and the prison. 

It has been said that it was largely owing to the 
superior education of her soldiery that Prussia obtained 
so signal a triumph over Austria in 1866. 

And it was the same cause that gave Germany, a 
few years later, her memorable conquest of France. 

Now granting all that may be claimed for the com- 
mon school education of the German soldier of the 
ranks, the fact seems to me incontestable that the ranks 
of our army contained a much larger proportion of well 
educated men. But possibly school education may have 
been too highly estimated in the ordinary operations of 
an army ; certainly the Southern armies, with a much 
lower grade of educational training, fought with a good 
deal of effectiveness. Such a training cannot compen- 
sate for a lack of discipline or of ability to take sure 
aim ; just as a general education, while a splendid foun- 
dation for technical knowledge, can not be a substitute 
for it. A college graduate will not be able to hit the 
bull's-eye the first time he fires his rifle, simply for the 
reason he knows Greek: but doubtless he will learn to 



l88 JOHN HANCOCK. 

make a center-shot somewhat the sooner from the dis- 
cipline that put Greek into his head. Besides, there 
sometimes comes a great crisis in battle when not only 
the skill of officers but the intellectual resources of the 
rank and file are required to meet the exigency. It is 
on such an occassion as this that educated brains tell ; 
and such an occasion was the famous assault on Mis- 
sionary Ridge. The commander-in-chief had elaborated 
a plan of battle with great care and according to the 
science of war. A part of that plan was, that when the 
attacking columns in the front of the Ridge had taken 
the enemy's rifle pits at its base, they were to halt, 
intrench, and wait further orders. The part of the bat- 
tle's program which brought our forces into the enemy's 
rifle pits was carried out in exact accordance with the 
prearranged plan of the general, who, surrounded by 
some of the most eminent officers of the war, and from 
a position that commanded the whole field, viewed the 
operation with the utmost satisfaction. But suddenly 
something struck his gaze not so satisfactory. The men 
who had taken the rifle pits were not stopping, were not 
entrenching, but were marching right up the steep 
acclivity, standards at the apex of the wedge-like 
columns. ''Who gave that order ?" was the angry 
exclamation of the commander. ''Thomas, did you do 
it?" Thomas hadn't done it; Granger hadn't done it; 
none of the generals had done it. No ; that was a time 
when the common soldiers took command. The move- 
ment was from their brain. They saw as one man the 
thing to be done, and with an unsurpassed courage, car- 
rying their officers with them, they never stopped — they 
could not be stopped — until they reached the crest of the 
Ridge, and the battle was won. The annals of war fur- 



SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 189 

nish no parallel to this action. Here for once the Amer- 
ican private soldier had a chance to show the stuff he 
was made of, and that he had a brain to devise as well 
as a hand to execute. Everlasting honor, then, to the 
thirty thousand generals who marched up the rocky face 
of Missionary Ridge ! 

The intelligence of our Common Soldier was such that 
he could not be made to believe, however stout the 
assertions of his commanders, or however ingeniously con- 
structed the bulletins from the War Department, that a' 
defeat was a victory, — and the number of that sort of 
victories on both sides was pretty large. The people 
at home might be deceived, and often were ; but his 
straight-seeing eye was not to be blinded. There was 
not a private soldier who believed — whatever some offi- 
cers might pretend to believe in the matter — that the 
first day's fight at Shiloh or the fight at Chickamauga 
was a Union victory. On the contrary, he has never 
doubted that the Federal army on both those occasions 
escaped annihilation as an organized body by the barest 
scratch. I mean not to criticise unkindly the blunders of 
commanders ; but after every charitable deduction has 
been made, there can be no doubt that many of these 
blunders were crimes. The private soldiers suffered 
again and again from what a forcible writer has called 
the awful incompetency of their leaders, and they knew 
perfectly where the blame lay. Could anything be more 
pathetic than the words of the wounded soldier in the 
dreadful hospital, after the attack on the stone wall at 
Fredericksburg, as given by the writer a moment since 
mentioned : ''My God; I shouldn't care that my leg is 
gone, if there had been any chance." A competent 
general doesn't send men in where there isn't any 



ipo JOHN HANCOCK. 

chance. Such an operation is not a battle ; it is a 
slaughter. I have always looked on that New England 
general as one of the finest heroes of the war who, 
having committed a great mistake by which many lives 
were uselessly sacrificed, did not, when stricken by 
remorse, skulk off to a peaceful home, but resigned his 
commission, volunteered in the ranks, and carried his 
musket as a private soldier throughout the remainder of 
the conflict. Sad to say, his was the only known case 
of the kind. 

The war dragged on month after month, and the 
months lengthened into years; ardent aspirations had 
been quenched by dire disasters. The fine material of 
which the armies were composed wasted away with no 
seeming results for the costly sacrifices made. The 
boys " had no chance." Would it have been at all 
wonderful if they had become discouraged ? Had they 
been less intelligent and less patriotic, they might have 
done so ; even given up in despair, and listened to sug- 
gestions of compromise ; might have given their voices 
to the patching up of a delusive peace, with none of the 
great questions, submitted to the wager of battle, settled. 
But it had been made apparent to all classes of our peo- 
ple, and to none more than the soldier, that there could 
be but one of two endings to the war, either the uncon- 
ditional restoration of the Union, with slavery — which 
had been the cause of all the dissensions between the 
two sections — forever abolished ; or the permanent divis- 
ion of our nationality, with all the woes likely to follow. 
There had ceased to be room for any compromises. On 
this basis the controversy was to be fought to the bitter 
end ; and the brunt of the fighting was to come to the 
private soldier. Amid all discouragements, the situation 



SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 191 

for the officers was ameliorated by what could not, to any 
considerable extent, affect the privates — the looking for- 
ward to promotion in rank. And their chances in this 
direction were always increased by a bloody battle, 
whether it were a victory or a defeat. I neither say nor 
believe that the officer was not as brave and patriotic as 
the private soldier, but that the former had the incen- 
tive of ambition — not an ignoble motive either — ^to stay 
his courage when darkness encompassed him, while the 
love of his country's flag was the only support of the 
latter. The private in all his actions was far divorced 
from every selfish motive. He displayed a splendid 
courage with no expectations of honor or material 
reward. He suffered privations, he marched, he fought 
and died from pure love of country. I do not mean to 
assert that this love was always a conscious feeling ; but 
I believe, hid away as a live coal in the core of his 
being, it was the impulse that directed the actions of his 
soldier life. In consequence of that demoralization 
which always follows in the track of war, — even, it is sad 
to own, in the track of a perfectly just war, — it is impos- 
sible that in some poor tempted souls this coal dwindled 
to a last feeble spark, then died out and left all within 
cold and dark. But, Comrades, we have a right to cherish 
the belief that such instances were few. 

What a grand heritage have our fallen comrades left 
us ! Any language that should adequately set forth its 
greatness might well seem to foreign peoples the lan- 
guage of boastful extravagance. We ourselves can 
scarcely realize how wonderful our daily growth is, and 
the pitch of power and wealth to which we have 
already arrived ; much less can we conceive what shall 
be the splendor of our estate in the future. It is a per- 



192 JOHN HANCOCK. 

fectly sane prediction that within a century all North 
America will be living under one flag, and that in 
another century the boundaries of the Great Republic 
will extend from the frozen ocean of the North to the 
straights of Magellan on the south ; or if not thus, as a 
great new world federation of republics. 

That we owe all these magnificent possibilities to the 
brave fellows who fought out the great question of 
nationality in our civil war, is not ascribing to them too 
high praise. For had it not been for them, our country 
would have been cut up into a number of warring divis- 
ions, and to its disintegration there could have been no 
end. 

But at what a price was this heritage bought ! I do 
not refer to the four thousand millions of debt incurred in 
the suppression of the rebellion, nor to the other thou- 
sands of millious destroyed in military operations. These 
were not overwhelming, and at the end of a quarter of a 
century we scarcely feel the burden. But the loss of 
the hundreds of thousands of the most energetic, the 
most intelligent, and the noblest of the young men of 
the nation, can never be repaired. When a great soul 
drops out of the world the void is never filled. When 
we think of these young men sleeping in bloody graves, 
their high hopes and aspirations suddenly extinguished 
forever, we ask ourselves. Is our new Union worth the 
price paid for it ? With bowed heads we answer, yes ; 
and it is not to be doubted that if our heroes could 
speak to us from their last resting place their answer 
would be the same. 

But how shall we pay the debt of gratitude we owe 
our comrades ? To meet once a year to deck their 
graves with flowers is indeed a beautiful custom ; one, it 



SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 193 

is to be hoped, that will never be abandoned. Beautiful 
as this custom is, there are higher tributes to be paid to 
their memories. Our brothers of the tented field are 
growing gray, and their ranks are thinning fast. In 
another quarter of a century they will be nearly all 
gone. We can by a thoughtful kindliness materially 
lighten the burdens they are carrying on their march to 
their last camping ground. A story of the Emperor 
Alexander II. of Russia — our one staunch friend during 
the rebellion — will indicate our duty and the duty of the 
government to them. In the ranks of the troops serving 
about the Emperor's person was a young officer of dis- 
tinguished bravery, and equal poverty, and ■ possessed 
of not a little vanity, withal. It was found by some of 
his fellow officers that, though he carried a fme watch- 
chain, no watch was attached to it. This information 
was communicated to the Emperor. So, on some parade 
occassion, Alexander, either as a reproof of his officer's 
vanity, or possibly with an object less praiseworthy — a 
cruel kind of joke — pulled out his watch and, looking at 
it, said to the officer, "My watch tells me it is ten 
o'clock, what does your watch say?" **My watch. 
Sire," replied the young man with quiet dignity, ** tells 
me it is always time for me to die in your Majesty's ser- 
vice." ** And mine tells me further,'' instantly returned 
the Emperor, struck with the nobleness of the reply, and 
extending his watch sparkling with a thousand brilliants, 
** that the time has come when some recompense should 
be made for such faithful devotion." Our comrades 
were ever ready to sacrifice themselves for their 
country; and to that country it should always be a 
pleasure, as it is a duty, to reward in all reasonable and 
proper ways such fidelity. The young son of the Chap- 



194 JOHN HANCOCK. 

lain of the Soldiers' Home — a noble lad of sixteen — as 
he lay dying, threw his arms about his parent's neck, 
and his last words whispered in that parent's ear were, 
" Father, don't forget the soldiers." These words ought 
to be our country's motto. 

But a nobler way of honoring the memories of our 
departed comrades than either I have named, will be to 
strive with a consuming purpose to make our country 
worthy of their heroism. The greatness of a nation lies 
not in its size or material wealth. Athens was scarcely 
larger than one of our counties ; and yet her thought 
has in a large measure shaped the civilization of the 
world; and that thought will abide among men as long 
as time shall endure. The world is kept alive by two 
things, — great ideas and great deeds ; and the nation 
whose standard of thinking and doing is not planted 
upon these can not long survive. Bigness and boasting 
will not save her, nor will all the *' wealth of Ind." 

The great underlying principle of our national institu- 
tions is to give the common man a chance. To do this 
we must provide every facility for his education ; for 
without intelligence and morality he will be a feeble crea- 
ture, dangerous to himself and society. The mighty tide 
of immigration throws upon our shores a million of people 
every year. They come from all the countries of the 
world, a wonderful mixture of the industrious and peace- 
fully disposed, and socialists, anarchists and nihilists. All 
are to be moulded by our educational forces into an honest, 
humane, law-abiding, and homogenous people ; — a hercu- 
lean task, indeed ! We must educate, too, into a more 
liberal patriotism than has been common in the world. 
The Greek thought everyone born outside the narrow 
limits of his country a barbarian ; and the Chinese holds 



SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 195 

the same notion in respect to foreigners. Our youth 
must view his country from a higher plane; and must 
constantly endeavor to make her worthy of a supreme 
love, in which there shall not be the slightest tinge of 
shame. We must also rear a class of statesmen who 
instead of pandering to the ignorance and prejudices of 
the people, will have the manliness to reprove them with 
the most courageous frankness when they are in the 
wrong. 

By cultivating and living such ideals will the rising 
generation show their appreciation of their glorious 
ancestry; and further show (in the immortal language 
of the Gettysburg address) their high resolve that *'our 
dead shall not have died in vain, and that, under God, 
the government of the people, by the people, and for 
the people, shall not perish from the earth." 



